


there were five of us (and now it's just you and I)

by sentichefuoripiove



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Rating may change idk yet, Slow Burn, basically all the way to the end, i just need to prove A Point(TM) ok, it's so canon that there's actual stretches of canon dialogue in it, pretty much everyone shows up really, s12-14 AU but not that much actually, there will be no jo or jolex slander under my roof but merlex is the endgame here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 83,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24010009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentichefuoripiove/pseuds/sentichefuoripiove
Summary: He doesn’t mind being her person, even when it means that sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night to her standing at the foot of his bed like she’s the demon from some freaking horror movie. He loves her, and listening to her vent about anything and anyone has never been a burden, as much as he sometimes acts like it is.Buthavinga person, that is harder for him. He’s not used to having someone who is contractually obligated to listen to him whenever he has even the smallest of issues. It’s not the way he was raised, the way he is built: all his life he either smashed things down until they disappeared, or until they festered long enough that they got out on their own and caused him trouble.Until somewhere along the way, he found Meredith. He knows that he could tell her anything and she wouldn’t even flinch, she would listen and wait until he was all talked out, and then turn right around and say or do exactly what he needed her to. He’s still getting used to how all that works, sometimes.What happens when we look at Alex and Meredith from s12 to s14 with shipper glasses on and we see that not much actually changes.
Relationships: Alex Karev/Jo Wilson Karev, Meredith Grey/Alex Karev
Comments: 78
Kudos: 224





	1. prologue

On the first day of every residency class, Doctor Webber gives his big speech, every year it’s the same: _“Look around you, say hello to your competition”_ and blah, blah, blah.

Alex remembers the day he was the one down there. He was young and full of himself, so focused on finally seeing what the inside of an OR _actually_ looked like to take anything or anyone else in, really. Everything felt new and exciting, and absolutely terrifying.

But the speech, the speech he remembers, if only for the fact that for the next ten years he got to listen to it over and over again, to the point that it’s possible that it just bled into the memory of his first day from one of the other times he’s heard it.

Year after year, the speech is still the same. 

He pretends he doesn’t care about all this crap, but every year he sits with all the other attendings in the gallery, while the new interns get herded inside the OR. They look young and scared, some of them brave enough to shoot furtive glances up at the gallery, trying not to meet the eyes of the navy-scrubs-wearing surgeons that are lining up above them.

Alex wonders for a second if this is what he looked like to attendings back then, and has to stop himself from grimacing at the thought.

_“A month ago, you were in med school, being taught by doctors. Today, you are the doctors. The five years you spend here as surgical residents will be the best and worst of your lives.”_

He can feel himself mouth along to Webber’s words without even thinking about it, and he’s vaguely aware of Robbins and Meredith doing the same on either side of him. 

What can you do, it’s tradition.

There is something reassuring about all of this, about things looking the same as always, He hates getting sentimental, but for some reason doing this, taking part in this little moment on the first day of a new year manages to make him feel better, and it’s probably the first time in a while he actually feels like things are normal, and not like everything about his life is spinning out of control. 

_“Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty, five of you will crack under the pressure, two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line, this is your arena.”_

He steals a glance at Meredith, aware of the fact that he has been doing it way too much recently. He can _feel_ himself hovering, and he doesn’t know how or why she hasn’t told him to go to hell yet, because he realizes he’s been unbearable. 

But she disappeared on him for almost a year, leaving him to deal with everyone around him going insane: Torres flying to Zurich to make sure Yang wasn’t lying to them and actually harboring a fugitive Meredith, Webber and Bailey sick with worry but god forbid anyone say something about it, and the sisters. 

The sisters had been a complete mess, and for some reason they had appointed him the one tasked to make sure they would all keep it together. He had to host Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and being generally ready to pick up the pieces of whatever crisis was going on that week in their so-called, weird little family.

He fell into the role easily, really, and rarely let his own worries and fears show, but it was hard on his too. It was a strange feeling, knowing she wouldn’t be at the hospital where he could always find her, or when he felt like he needed to talk things through with someone and for a second he forgot she would not pick up her phone if he tried to call her.

She had told him she needed him to be her person, but then she left without a word and how was he supposed to help her, when he didn’t even know if she was ok.

So yes, he’s being unbearable, but he feels like she mostly deserves it.

Meredith doesn’t seem to notice him looking at her, she’s focused on the scene below them, and it hits him in that moment how worried he used to be about today. While she was gone, and he had resigned himself to the fact that she would never be back, he often thought about this day, and what it would feel like to hear the _only two of you will still be here_ part. He would have to admit to himself that he was actually the last one standing, the last one left behind.

Until he got the phone call, his best friend and a brand new baby waiting for him at the end of a three hours flight from Seattle to San Diego.

After berating her for nearly giving him a heart attack when the call he got wasn’t from her but from the hospital, he ended up staying there a month, taking care of baby Ellis, who looked so much like her mother it was honestly unsettling, spending time with the kids, and very decisively _not_ hovering over Meredith, who walked around the apartment with the same look on her face she had before she left. It felt like she had lost something important and wasn’t quite sure how to act without it. 

He knew, without having to ask, why she called him and not someone else. She knew he would understand what she did, without having to explain or ask for time, and she was right. He never asked and the relief he felt at finally knowing where she was was enough for him to forgive everything else, but then they got back to Seattle and the fact that Derek wasn’t there with her, in her house, was so weird _even to him_ , that suddenly the hovering felt like second nature, like a visceral instinct right out of his childhood he didn’t know he still had in him.

“When did we start calling them _chicks and ducks_?” Meredith leans over to him, breaking him out of his thoughts, speaking over the chatter of everyone else’s comments. She has a confused look on her face, and the reminder of last year stings again, as it always does.

“You’ve been gone a year” he reminds her, because no matter what, he will not be the one to let her live down her dumb decisions.

The conversation doesn’t last longer than that, the sound of pagers going off all at the same time echoes across the room and in an instant they’re all on their feet, out the door and down the stair to the pit, a wave of dark and light blue scrubs alike, getting their game face on, ready to get to work.

It turns out there’s a massive MVC that puts them all to work, a couple of hours later he’s already exhausted and he’s not even halfway through his shift. 

That’s why he had half-hoped that he had heard wrong, that Hunt didn’t spend the entire surgery selling Jo on the idea of touring in the Middle East like Kepner did. Knowing Jo, he’ll actually have to talk about it and he’s just so _tired._

“You know what? Screw it. You want to go, then go” he spits out at her, can tell she is actually surprised at his reaction, and it makes him even more annoyed. 

She really thought he would be down for it?

“What’s your problem?” she shoots back, her voice the high pitch she gets when she’s mad and getting defensive. “It sounded interesting! And for a minute, I thought it could be something that we’d do together, why not?”

He explains, not even trying to sound calmer, tells her what he thought he didn’t need to say, that his job matters to him and that this is the place he wants, needs to be. He’s not really thinking of what comes out of his mouth, but he feels himself say Meredith’s name somewhere in there and sees Jo physically recoil at that. It doesn’t take a genius to know he shouldn’t have said that, even though he meant it and he would never take it back.

Meredith’s back and she seems to be doing fine, but he still has this nagging feeling that something will set her off again, and he has spent enough time beating himself up over not seeing the signs the first time that he’s sure as hell not going to let it happen again. He needs to stay here, for her, for her kids and in some strange way for their friends, too. In some hidden corner of his mind, he lets himself admit that he’s not sure he can bear her leaving again, for his own sake and no one else’s.

Before he can tell Jo any of that, maybe try to phrase it differently and make it better, she’s out the door and he’s left with an uneasy feeling that lasts just long enough that he starts feeling guilty, before he’s interrupted by his pager going off, again. _Damn it._

*

He goes back and forth in his mind all day on whether he should apologize to Jo or not, feeling angry at her for not understanding what he was trying to say, then guilty for the way he snapped at her, then circling right back to anger again when he tells himself she’s known him long enough now that she should just _get it_ , shouldn’t she?.

Meredith comes up to him and asks to move back in, and maybe it was just because he was distracted and looking at charts so he doesn’t fully registers the question right away, but he doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t even think about it before he tells her _yeah, no big deal,_ and it is Meredith that has to remind him that well, maybe he should actually check with Jo first.

That _does_ make him feel plenty ashamed, and he’s back to guilty again.

*

He’s finally off work and of all things, at Richard Webber’s wedding. He is so tired he can barely move, and yet he keeps thinking that he’s lost count of how many times he actually fought with Jo today. They ended up talking about the house again, she got defensive, and he was stupid again and brought up Meredith, again.

The thing is, he doesn’t want Jo to hate Meredith, but he does realize he is probably making it very hard for her not to. He’s having a hard time explaining to her why he worries about his friend, how much it matters that he’s there every time she needs him to. 

Alex sees Jo with her friends, with Edwards, and he can see they’ve never had the kind of relationship he used to have, has with Meredith. It’s not just about covering each other for shifts and complaining about the attendings when they can’t hear you. There’s got to be a connection, some kind of unbreakable bond that you don’t even know is there until it’s too late to break out of it. 

Because Jo doesn’t have it, it’s hard for him to explain to her why he feels the need to be there for Meredith like this: because she would do the same for him, because she _has_ done the same for him and he will have to spend the rest of their lives paying it back in some way. That does not mean he is prepared to lose Jo over it.

While he’s mulling this over his beer, she miraculously show up, and drags him away from Webber’s wedding before he can say anything. 

*

He had started this day reveling in the familiarity of it. It had felt exactly like any other first day of residency for the past ten years, and he had been grateful that his life now has routine, traditions, constants he can hold on to.

He should have known better, known that the feeling wasn’t really going to last, that something was going to come along and flip the entire day upside down in the way he least expected it.

He is still trying to figure out whether this is the good or bad kind of upside down.

He doesn’t know how or why they got to this place, but he is standing in the middle of a loft space that he’s almost sure was the set for last week’s NCIS, staring at Jo, hard look on her face.

“It took everything, all my savings, everything that I had and it was almost enough to cover the whole thing” she is telling him, and it finally registers.

“Wait, you’re buying this?”

“Well, um- _we_ are, if you want to pitch in. I put in an offer. Sell Meredith her house back” he can feel his eyes widen at that, did not expect her to factor any of that into her decision. He feels a wave of love wash over him, gratitude and affection all rolled into one, and he wants to step forward and hug her but she’s stops him, “I just saw this place, and I thought that we could make it anything, whatever we want. Because I love you, and I love living with you, but we should just…”

She is probably still talking, but he has stopped listening, because.

She loves him.

He is giddy with the revelation, he tries to act cool and makes fun of her for it and, Jo being Jo, she makes fun of him right back, throws his words from earlier back in his face. But she is smiling, and laughing, and he just pulls her into him and kisses her for the first time in the dump that is apparently his future home.

What the hell. He has lived in worse places, and at least here he gets to be loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! soooooo this was a real labour of love, and i'm very excited (and a little scared) i am finally sharing it with the world!
> 
> i really hope y'all liked it, leave a comment if you want to and you'll probably make my day! or, you know, find me on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com) and yell your thoughts at me, i'll love you forever
> 
> (all future chapters will be way longer than this, just consider yourselves warned. it's going to be a wild ride, but everything is done so expect updates to be fairly regular.)


	2. what are you gonna do if i leave

Alex used to have an intern, Morgan, who, on a good day, annoyed the hell out of him. To be fair, all his interns usually annoy him, especially during his residency when he was still insecure about being perceived as competent, and when other people expecting to rely on his guidance scared the crap out of him. 

Morgan, though, still stands out among the countless others. She wasn’t a bad doctor, but she was _needy_ , indecisive, calling him at all hours asking him to double check her work even for tasks that were nearly impossible to mess up. It used to drive him up the wall. Then he overworked her into premature labour.

Yeah, maybe he really used to be a jerk.

But when he thinks about it now, it led to one of the most defining cases in his career, and one of the moments that shaped him into the doctor he’s become. He’s thinking about Morgan and her kid today, about the series of impossible choices they asked her to make. Back then, he told her she needed to toughen up and make the best decisions for her kid. He thought he was doing the right thing, and he got a front row seat to how much that can break a parent. That was the first time he realized that if he can avoid it, his patients’ parents will never have to do the same.

He still hates working on newborns, and today it’s twins, a boy and a girl, untreatable liver cancer, related kidney and heart failure. Just like that, right off the womb. 

It’s not a choice when he takes all the decision making out of the parents’ hands: it’s his job, and he does it well, helping and serving others doesn’t just boil down to cutting them open and sticking your hands inside to fix some broken part, because the human body is not a car. Being a doctor is all of it, taking care of the patients and their family and doing _everything_ they can’t do for themselves.

That’s why he’s thinking about Morgan today, about impossible choices.

Today turns into early tomorrow, the night spent hunched over labs and charts, kicking DeLuca’s chair every twenty minutes to remind him it’s time to call UNOS again. He would have kept going, but Arizona takes a look at his face around 2 am and all but pushes him out of the chair and into his car, tells him to go take a shower and a nap. 

He slides open the door to the loft. He really is exhausted, because it feels ten times heavier than usual, and as soon as he sees Jo curled on the couch he gets reminded of the other giant question mark looming over his head.

_This morning, you were so worried about her being pregnant, remember that?_

He feels guilty all of a sudden, for forgetting about it. This morning, it felt so important, to the point that he broke his own personal rule (never, ever, give Robbins something to gossip about) and spilled everything to Arizona, who in turn had no problem laying down a list of everything that could have been wrong, things he didn’t even know he was supposed to be worried about. She’s the one who put the pregnancy scare into his head. 

It’s weird, how ten hours can change your priorities like that. You go from wondering if you’re going to be a father to devoting your life to make sure another man gets to be one. But now, in this unexpected window of downtime he carved for himself, he has to face his own life again.

Jo makes her way around the couch, produces a piece of paper and his tired brain takes a second to catch up, piece together the words out of her mouth and those printed on the document she’s holding.

It’s a notice, from a long time ago, from the fertility clinic where Izzie had her eggs frozen. _It’s not even an important bill or something, why does this matter_ , his sleep deprived brain wonders, before remembering there was something else he thought she would say.

_You thought she was pregnant, idiot._

“Oh, okay” he breathes out. _She’s not pregnant_ , relief fooding him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted it to be, or how he would have reacted. Relief it is. He files away the information and braces himself for the conversation he’s about to have, because even though he’s not sure why yet, Jo looks pissed, her jaw set angrily and fire in her eyes. “Oh, okay. This.”

Things get heated, even when he really tries to keep a level tone and not push back at her, because he doesn’t feel like he needs to (those embryos have been there, useless, for so long he honestly hasn’t given it a thought in years), and he wishes she would just understand that and not keep on going on and on about something so stupid. 

But Jo can’t stop attacking even when she’s not being attacked, and maybe if he had slept more than five hours in the past two days they could have avoided this, he could have stayed calm and collected and sit her down, talk to her like adults. 

“She was my wife, we were married” he reminds her, calm starting to slip away from him, and in the back of his mind this simple statement sparks something he had never really given much thought to before. _What if this is the point of the entire thing?_

The realization catches him off guard, and the next time he speaks he’s not trying to be calm anymore, all the frustration of the day, of this argument, all the terrifying feelings he now has swirling around inside his head coming to the surface.

_Is she picking a fight because she wants to be married?_

_Wait, do_ you _want to be married?_

His instinct is to fight the notion off so he snaps, yells at her over her own shrill voice, doesn’t even bother to wait for her answer, and he’s out the door. 

*

“If one of your kids had to die, which one would you choose and why?” he interrupts Meredith’s rant, not even sure what she’s talking to him about. 

“Well, Bailey, because he kept me up all night, but asks me tomorrow and it might be Zola. Why, what’s going on?” she smiles back brightly, not missing a beat, and he is so grateful that she was the one to find him and not Avery, or Torres, or anyone else really. She doesn’t bat an eye at his question, when everyone else would have looked at him like he had lost his mind, or thought he was a jerk for asking something so insensitive. 

He can afford the luxury of being blunt and direct with her, and she will always match him word for word, every time, because she too stopped trying to be polite a long time ago. She also doesn’t need much of an explanation to see that he’s stressed, and whatever it was she wanted to talk about when he came into the lab has been put on the backburner, her entire focus on him, on the case he takes his time detailing to her.

Once he gets going, he can’t quite seem to stop himself, and he pours out all of the anxiety he has about it, all the things that go beyond just savings those kids’ lives, but about feeling like he’s not good enough, still, after all these years.

“I mean, what if one of them becomes a serial killer, the other one’s gonna cure Alzheimer’s?” he finishes off, and the underlying question of _what if I can’t make up my mind about what I want_ seems to be the ongoing theme in his life today. 

They get interrupted when Arizona comes looking for him. She has her own pep talk ready, which does manage to quiet some of his worries. He senses Meredith standing up from her chair, and she bumps his shoulder a little when she walks up to him.

“Hey, are you free tonight?” she asks him with a reassuring smile.

“Maybe, depends on how things go in surgery” he half-commits, the meaning in his words clear to all three of them. _I hope I actually have something to work on._

“I’m going to the old house tonight, I need to get some things ready for the realtor. I might need some help” she supplies, the question implicit in her tone.

“Yeah, ok. I’ll let you know when I’m done” he counters, and he looks down at her as she approaches him, squeezes his shoulder and nods before pulling the door open, leaving him in the middle of the dark room. 

*

“Oh, hey, you made it!” Meredith greets him when she sees him approach the house. He left the car parked right beside hers, somewhere behind him, on the small clearing where the trailer (the one he sometimes forgets he used to call home) still sits, a little worse for wear than he remembers. She starts talking before he’s even reached the deck. She seems excited. “I have some great news to celebrate! I went to Bailey, did exactly as Callie said and-”

“Yeah, I made it” he interrupts her meekly and with a huff, plopping himself next to her on one of the deck chairs, hands still buried deep into the pockets of his jacket. She furrows her brow at his reaction and he almost feels bad for dampening her mood like this, because even if he feels like crap right now, she shouldn’t hold back on her excitement on his behalf.

“How did it go?” she asks, careful, her tone and demeanor changing instantly, and he knows she doesn’t actually need an answer to that. You can’t do this job even for half the time they’ve been doing it and not learn how to figure out an outcome just from one look, but she asks anyway, gives him the chance to offer as little or as much as he feels comfortable with.

“Not great” he tells her, and for a second he is tempted to just leave it at that (he knows she wouldn’t hold it against him if he decided to), but before he can even really think about it he’s already pouring everything else out.

“The girl got the dad’s liver and she bounced back great, she’s gonna be fine, staying in the NICU for now. But her brother…” he stops for a second, unsure of what really matters most in this moment, what are the right words to express the unthinkable pain of that family. “His parents gave him a name before we went into surgery. It was Daniel.”

“Daniel is a good name” she offers, in a reassuring and comforting voice.

He drops his head back on the headrest, turns a little to look at her, and the expression on his face must be miserable because she lets out a huff, something between a laugh and a sympathetic whine, and extends her arm to squeeze his hand. 

They stay like that for what feels like forever, in their respective chairs, both looking straight ahead, into the deep darkness of the woods at the edge of the property, their hands still intertwined, as if they forgot they are still connected.

Alex lets the silence wash over him, feeling calm and still enough that he can process the last couple of days, the physical and mental exhaustion from the case finally taking its toll. He wonders for a second how he’s going to drive back home without risking crashing straight into a tree, and what would Jo say if he just didn’t come home and spent the night in his car, right there in the woods.

Then he remember the last time she saw her, and decides that she probably wouldn’t mind that much.

“That is not the only thing that’s been bothering you” Meredith breaks the silence, and the look she gives him tells him she’s ready for whatever he’ll tell her, and for some reason that still surprises him, even after all these years.

A while back, when she informed him he would be her person from now on, he had tried to pretend like he didn’t know what she was talking about, even when- of course he did.

He doesn’t mind being her person, even when it means that sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night to her standing at the foot of his bed like she’s the demon from some freaking horror movie. He loves her, and listening to her vent about anything and anyone has never been a burden, as much as he sometimes acts like it is.

But _having_ a person, that is harder for him. He’s not used to having someone who is contractually obligated to listen to him whenever he has even the smallest of issues. It’s not the way he was raised, the way he is built: all his life he either smashed things down until they disappeared, or until they festered long enough that they got out on their own and caused him trouble.

Until somewhere along the way, he found Meredith. He knows that he could tell her anything and she wouldn’t even flinch, she would listen and wait until he was all talked out, and then turn right around and say or do exactly what he needed her to. He’s still getting used to how all that works, sometimes.

That’s why he doesn’t feel like he’s letting out some big secret when he speaks up.

“Jo found a notice from the fertility clinic where Izzie froze her eggs. She thought I had kids with her.”

“With Izzie?” she asks, incredulity and mirth in her voice, surely finding the notion ridiculous but graciously doing her best not to make a big deal of it.

“Yeah, and then went off on me about not wanting to have kids with _her_.”

“You don’t want to have kids with Wilson?”

He doesn’t want to answer, the truth still blurry, not even fully formed in his mind yet. Still, if he gives her some vague answer he knows she’ll see right through it, and that would be even more of a headache. “I never said that, _she_ said that.”

“Wait, you _do_ want to have kids with Wilson?” she exclaims, adjusting herself on her chair and looking at him with wide eyes. “Since when?”

“Shut up, Mer” he scoffs, shooting her a warning glare, “I know you don’t like her, but we’ve been together forever, what do you think I wanted with her? Just the opportunity to live in the worst neighborhood in Seattle?”

She stares at him, considering his words. “Yeah, I don’t like her- that doesn’t mean I don’t think she could be good for you” she finally says, and he really doesn’t know if he should take that as an insult or a sign she is finally in his corner about this relationship.

“Look” she tries again after a long sigh, “if this is something you actually want, you should talk to her about it. There is no point in half-fighting, if every time you two have an argument one of you gets too riled up and leaves before you can finish the conversation. You will never know what the other actually wants.”

“I think she wants to get married” he confesses, almost in a whisper, worried that saying it out loud will make it realer, somehow.

“She said that?” she has the same surprised, outraged tone from before, and this time he doesn’t even bother to warn her off, just glares at her, the full extent of what little fight he has left in him.

“I don’t know” he huffs, “maybe? She said that if I was ready to have children with Izzie because we were married, what does that make of her?”

“Alex, you weren’t ready to have children with Izzie” she says, half a smirk on her face, “and I’m sorry for saying this, but you weren’t really married to her either” and he wants to get mad at her, but he can’t find it in himself to protest, because deep down he knows she’s right, always has been, and he has long stopped pretending that getting married had been a smart choice.

“But this is different, Mer. We are not going in circles with this, breaking up and getting back together constantly. She is not dying, and she’s not leaving, so what am I waiting for? Because I’m really scared about making a decision and I don’t know why.”

And there it is, the underlying reason behind all of it. It’s not that he feels like Jo is pressuring him into something he doesn’t want to do, but it’s not the opposite either. 

It’s just that he can’t make up his damn mind. 

She gives him a long, silent look, and without another word she gets up from the deck chair, and makes her way inside. He can see her rummage through her purse, the clear glass windows big enough to let filter in the light from the porch lanterns. When she comes back, she’s holding her tablet, and she’s already looking through it, face glowing in the screen’s light.

“Here, let’s pick one” she tells him as she hands him the device, and his eyes take a second to adjust to the excessive brightness. Then he finally sees what she’s showing him, and his stomach does a double take.

“Are you crazy?! I’m not buying her a ring!”

“Maybe you’re not buying it, but at least you’re taking a step in some direction. For now, you’re just looking.”

Her tone leave no room for protest, so he lets himself tentatively take a proper look. It’s the website for a jewelry store downtown he recognizes, because when you reach a certain age and you have friends who get married this is the sort of thing you constantly hear about, even when you do your damn hardest to block it out.

The catalogue looks daunting.

Meredith has gone back to her chair, but she is sitting with one of her legs folded under her, her elbows propped up on one armrest, and she’s peering over his shoulders as he scrolls through the first few rings on the page.

“Wait, scroll back up!” she interjects at one point. “This one looks really nice.”

“Yeah, and also costs twice what the monthly mortgage on the loft is.”

“Well, that means nothing, that place is a dump” she mutters under her breath, and that has him burst in a full laugh for the first time in days.

“It does look nice right?” he wonders out loud, giving himself the chance to actually look at it. It’s simple, classic, not flashy to the point that it would turn heads, but in a size decent enough that it wouldn’t seem cheap. Jo isn’t a showy person, by necessity but also by nature, and she wouldn’t like something that would make her feel like she’s drawing attention to herself, but at the same time he wants her to feel like she deserves something beautiful.

He can feel Meredith’s gaze on him, so he turns to look at her, finds her too close and he has to back away a little to see her properly.

“What?”

“ _It is nice_ , and I think you should buy it” she tells him, matter-of-factly.

“But you said…” he protests, surprised, words sputtering out.

“I know what I said” she says, moves her hand to his forearm to calm him down, “you could just look at it, but the face you made while you were looking… You were thinking about giving it to Wilson, and if just thinking about it makes you look like that, you should buy it for real.”

He knows he should fight her on it, but looking down at the ring again he is overwhelmed by the thought of Jo actually wearing his ring on her finger, that exact one, and he feels his face split in what he is sure looks like the world’s stupidest grin.

“Will you come with me to take a look at it? There is no way I can do this right on my own.”

“I will” she laughs, giddy, “but we both know I’m not a jewelry person either. You know who you should ask?” she tells him, and he already knows the answer, he’s already groaning when she finishes her sentence. “Jackson.”

She laughs again when he makes a face and then grows stern. “I am not broadcasting this around any more than I need to. I’m sorry but you’re coming, no questions.”

She chuckles and nods, and he finally breathes easy, free of the weight he didn’t know he was carrying. Now, if he wants, he can let himself worry about what the outcome will be, but at least the decision is made.

He relaxes his shoulders, slides down on the deck chair more comfortably, turns to Meredith. “So, you were telling me you went to Bailey? For what?”

*

When he comes home, Jo is in bed. Giddy with his newfound sense of purpose he drops his pants right in front of her, makes her the wildest of propositions, and she turns him down laughing.

It stings a little, because now he feels uncertain again, starts to question everything he talked himself into, and why would she come for him like that if this isn’t what she wants in the first place. He’s about to cut her off as she drones on about their job, and their future plans, when he remembers Meredith, telling him to listen to her, listen to the whole side of her argument before interrupting, instead of always trying to one-up each other.

And while he listens, he can feel the giddy feeling come back, and he watches her incredulous expression grow more and more as he jumps across the room toward the bed, pants still tangled around his ankles. He’s sure he looks like an idiot but in the moment he doesn’t care one bit, the sound of Jo laughing filling the room.

“Let’s get a dog!” she tries as a last defence. “No, do not come near me! We are not making a baby!” she tries to push him off, half-heartedly and giggling.

“Woof” is his best counter-offer, and his heart melts when she actually, finally, lets him kiss her.

*

Meredith’s being weird. 

It’s not the fact that she’s being nice to Jo, but more than that it’s the fact that she’s blending those margaritas way too long, and Meredith Grey has never been one to screw up a tequila drink. Ever. In her life. 

“Something is wrong” he tries to tell her, when the list of evidence gets too long to ignore and before he can get something out of her that isn’t her standard _everything is fine_ pile of crap, Pierce interrupts them and Meredith slips out and away from his insistent questioning.

The kitchen is messy, and loud, more crowded that it has ever been in the entire history of this house, probably. No proper, dinner-party-worthy, meal has ever been cooked in this kitchen, except for that time Izzie made Thanksgiving dinner, and even that barely happened, so.

In all the chatty chaos around them, a million conversations being held at once, he wonders for a second if he should worry about Arizona’s alcohol intake, or the fact that Pierce apparently disappeared into the upstairs bathroom and never came back, before Meredith comes down into the kitchen again. He’s already on high alert to the point that he instantly looks for her when she does, and he doesn’t need much to convince himself that he was right, something is very wrong, and the fact that he still doesn’t know what it is makes the entire situation a lot more dangerous. Instincts and training kick in, and in his head he draws up a triage list of the most pressing matters.

Pierce is code green. She looked frazzled and a little unhinged, but that seemed neither urgent nor critical. She could handle herself.

Arizona is a little more serious, code yellow. That amount of alcohol is definitely going to become a problem soon, but Shepherd has sat her down and things seem to have calmed down for now. Things come to worst, Kepner can take care of her.

But Meredith- code red, probably.

“You don’t even know how to cook” he reminds her, smirking, leaning on the counter close enough that the others won’t hear him grilling her.

“Alex, I’m a surgeon, I know how to use a knife” she tells him, and immediately proceeds to cut herself, because of course she can’t, they both know this. But she’s stubborn, so he balls up a bunch of paper towels on her finger even as she hisses in pain and drags her away before she can fight him on it.

Everything else that might happen in the kitchen will be someone else’s problem. 

*

The conversation flows easy if a little chaotic, nothing new for this group of people he calls his friends, with Bailey sitting at the other end of the table, commanding the scene like she so often does, and the familiarity in all of this should ease Meredith’s nerves, but when he meets her eyes she has a look on her face like she’s trying to tell him something. Arizona is still drunk and still running her mouth too much, so it’s no wonder Mer ends up snapping, with the mood she’s been in all night.

He can just see the shift in her expression, when it goes from a pleading look, begging for him to silently understand what she’s trying to tell him, to the stone-cold face she gets when she’s faced with an inevitable situation. He knows that look, so he should have an advantage over everyone else to brace himself before she explodes, because he’s expecting her to.

He just doesn’t expect her to say _that_.

“Perfect Penny killed my husband.”

_Oh, crap._

*

He finds her pacing in her bedroom, nervously wringing her hands. She doesn’t even bother to look up to see who entered the room, so he just closes the door and leans against it, waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. 

“Mer.”

She spins around and finally looks at him, hands still held together tightly, and what he sees on her face…. _terrifies him._

She looks like she’s in pain, in the worst pain he’s ever seen her in. She finds his eyes and holds his gaze, like she’s scared that if she looks away he’s gonna disappear, and she’ll be left alone. She’s terrified too.

He takes a step forward, careful, and he lets out a breath of relief when she doesn’t flinch away from him, something starting to crumble under the surface, and when he moves again she just lets go, and drops on the bed.

The tension is still there though, in the way she is perched on the very edge on the mattress, one leg folded under her and the other firm on the ground, ready to bolt if need be. She looks lost, eyes wide and pleading for him to just _get it_ , begging him to understand without expecting her to actually have to say a word. So he just sits on the bed too, right in front of her and mirroring her exact position. 

He leans in a little, elbows on his thigh, and doesn’t dare to break eye contact, not when it seems like he’s the only thing she’s holding on to right now.

“You should have told me” he says eventually, softly, because he thinks that if he had just known, maybe the situation could have been avoided.

“I- I didn’t-” she stammers, unsure and with a broken voice.

“What didn’t you? You didn’t know? Didn’t you recognise her?” he asks, surprised, because it seems unlikely to him she would ever forget the face of the person that changed her life, and not in the good way.

“I did, the second I opened the door. I just didn’t know how to-”

She goes silent again, and he waits for her to pick her sentence back up, but she tears her eyes away from him and that somehow means that she’s done, closed off again even to him, and he knows there’s not much use in trying to change her mind. She’s bouncing the leg that’s hanging off the bed now, nerves clearly just under her skin, ready to jump out. 

“So, what do you wanna do? You want me to get her out of here? To get everybod-”

“I don’t know!” she snaps, letting her head fall into her hands and that is the exact moment Shepherd chooses to walk through the door.

There is screaming, and crying, and the only thing he can do is stand there, share nervous looks with Hunt while Meredith tears into her sister like a feral animal, fierce and angry and desperate. Amelia cries, gives into Owen who just guides her back out, and Meredith’s rage crumbles in front of him, but before he can say something she marches into her bathroom, the way the door slams after her clearly telling him _don’t follow me._

The night only gets impossibly worse after that.

*

It’s the middle of the night, around what could very well be 3 am The phone rings, and he answers because he always has to, but also because he has a nagging feeling it’s probably Meredith and it’s bad, viscerally knows this even as he untangles himself from the sheets and from Jo’s warm and heavy body.

“Hello?” his voice cracks, still half asleep.

There’s sounds on the other end of the line, which he can’t make out but are starting to sound more and more like whimpering. Great.

“Mer? Are you ok?”

This time the answer is a full sob, round and heavy, breaking apart at the end, a breath sucked in sharply.

“I’m coming over, can you give me a minute?” he asks, the way she whimpers a little all the confirmation he needs.

He’s already up, not even bothering to change out of his sleeping clothes except for the jacket he throws on and the shoes he ties sitting on the edge of the bed. He hurriedly explains the situation to a disgruntled Jo, clearly not happy about being woken in such a hasty fashion, and he’s out the door before he can remember to kiss her goodbye.

Earlier tonight, he and Meredith had been in her room, sitting in silence with a bottle of tequila between them. As he drives to her house, he thinks about the fact that he asked her _what are you gonna do if I leave?_ , but hadn’t bothered pestering her for an actual answer. Maybe he should have, and this nightmare phone call wouldn’t have happened.

He finds Meredith sitting on the porch swing outside, with her legs drawn up and her chin resting on one knee. She’s barefoot, and there’s makeup running down her cheeks. He had noticed it earlier tonight, the dark color around her eyes, and he had thought it looked hot. It suited her, dark and moody and all that crap.

“Are you ok? You look like a raccoon” he jokes gruffly, and she looks like she wants to laugh at it, and he takes it as a win even when the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes in the right way. 

“What happened?” he asks, as he busies himself with taking off his jacket, working it around her legs and tucking it under her butt, trying to cover her bare feet. They live in Seattle, when is the weather ever appropriate to be barefoot outside, in the middle of the night?

“I went to bed” she explains, in a calm tone that contrasts the way she looks, “and I dreamed of Derek, of when he left the last time. But I woke up, and I couldn’t remember what his last words were. It scared me.”

He says nothing, because he knows what that feels like. He played his last conversation with Izzie in his head for years after she left, every night for months until he wasn’t sure anymore of what was still real and what his mind had conjured up to fill in the gaps of his fading memory. It felt like hell, going over it again and again, but it was also the only way he still had to keep her close somehow.

But his memory was a bad one, of her leaving him. Plus she is still alive somewhere, even if he doesn’t know how to find her. That’s a small consolation.

Meredith has a great and happy last memory, with the absolute certainty it’s the very last one. That is not something he is equipped to give advice on.

“That sucks” is all he can manage to say, as he drapes his arm around her shoulders and pulls until she’s crowded against him, his grip tight and her head resting on his chest.

They are silent for long moments. A few cars pass by the street in front of them, but for the most part the neighborhood is quiet, dark. Alex doesn’t feel Meredith move after a while, and he starts to think of a way he can get her upstairs and into her bedroom without waking her, when she finally speaks up.

“Do you remember our intern year?” she asks quietly. “I almost got blown up in the OR”

He finds the question odd, but he nods anyway. Of course he remembers.

“Of course I remember. That should have really been the first warning sign that something was way way wrong with that place.”

She awards him with a watery laugh, and the tightness in his chest gives a little, he can feel her relax against him and if reminiscing about all the times she almost died is what she needs to get through tonight, this is what they’ll talk about, as weird as it sounds.

“He was with Addison, you remember? But he came looking for me after. Wanted to make sure I was ok.”

He hums, non-committal. Giving unbiased opinions on the way Shepherd used to treat her had always been Yang’s job more than his, they never asked him and he never offered, back then still trying to act like he didn’t care about all their crap. That’s why he never really quite learned to walk the precarious line of her and Shepherd’s relationship, and even if he were good at it he doubts this would be the right moment to let her know what he has actually always thought of him back then, because he’s not sure he’d tell her what she wants to hear.

When they were interns, he tried to stay out of all the drama, and even before she decided they were gonna be friends and slowly started to take him in, he could see that there was something about the way she talked about Derek, and the way he acted around her, that never quite matched up. Alex knows that when one person has enough power to potentially change the other, it’s only a matter of time before they actually try and do it.

But years passed, and Alex learned to tune out the rollercoaster that was their relationship. He would listen to her talk about it, at work and in surgery, at Joe’s and at home, until someone would usually tell her to shut up, or give up and give her some advice. Usually Yang, who could not only match Alex on the snark but also wasn’t scared to tell Meredith when she was being a blind idiot.

“I couldn’t remember our last kiss, but he could. I can’t ask him this time” she continues, and he’s not surprised she’s not crying anymore: once she’s let the reason out, controlling her emotions has always come easy for her.

“It’ll come back to you, keep thinking about it” he offers quietly, and he knows it’s not much, as advice goes, wishes he could give her more.

“What did Wilson say about you leaving? She must have been happy about it, I bet” she asks, and he wants to tell her about the six messages he knows he has from Jo, because he felt the vibrations in his pocket but he was so focused on Meredith he didn’t even pull out his phone to check. “Tell her I’m sorry about tonight, all of it.”

“She’ll live” he is quick to dismiss, and she shoots him a glance that he knows too well means _you are being an idiot about this._

“Will you just tell her? I feel awful about dinner, it is not what I had in mind, I wanted it to be nice.” She stops for a second, considers her next words. “I’m also sorry about dragging you here in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t worry about that” he says, because she shouldn’t, not when it comes to him, not when it comes to stuff like this, “and she wouldn’t believe you.”

“You should tell her anyway. And it wouldn’t hurt to say that you are sorry too, you know” and her expression is still the same, _you idiot_ painted all across her face.

He snorts, and she laughs, and when he feels the seventh message vibrate against his thigh he actually untangles himself from her to retrieve his cellphone and check. He can feel her gloat by his side.

“Shut up.”

*

When he finds Jo in the burn unit wing and leans on the door, he isn’t expecting for things to take a turn for the worst like this. He just meant to ask her if she wanted to have lunch with him, which a very normal thing for a boyfriend to do.

Even though boyfriends usually don’t take girlfriends to lunch with an engagement ring tucked into the pocket of their lab coats.

The box is sitting heavy in his pocket, bouncing over his thigh every time he takes a step. Meredith had dug it out of her bag less than an hour ago, smiling conspiratorially at him when she tried to pass it to him without anyone in the lounge noticing. 

In that moment, he had felt happy and a little anxious but in the good way, and the feeling had carried on as he went about his day, and now that he’s here with Jo he has to try really hard not to let his excitement show. 

But he’s starting to realize how useless that is, he’s taken aback when Jo turns around and starts to attack him with a fury he doesn’t think he has ever seen on her before. She’s pissed at him, from earlier, when she found him in the hallway and he had to get her away, worried she would sense something was going on with him and Meredith, that maybe she could sense something was going on with the _ring_.

The idea was absolutely stupid, of course, and he was worried he had been a little rude to her, and that was the reason for the lunch, trying to make it up to her, but she’s now focusing on something else entirely and he feels so blindsided his brain takes a second to catch up to her.

“God, you always defend her, even when she’s being a complete bitch to me!”

_Wait, Is this about Meredith?_

It must be, because she starts to drone in on that like she’s been waiting to spew all of her anger on his for a while now, and he does his best trying to keep a level tone and not take sides, because this is still a fight he doesn’t want to take any part in. He can’t, won’t choose, he’s decided that a long time ago and he’s not going back on it now.

“Because she’s always your priority!” she screams at his face, and all his well meaning, good intentions are starting to slip away from him because he can feel himself losing his temper too.

“That’s not true, she’s been through a lot- her husband died!”

“So what, that gives her a license to treat me like crap?” she spits back, and his hear drops to his stomach at the force in her voice, the way she’s just so _angry_ at him for something he didn’t even now she was still feeling. He wants to feel bad, but somehow there’s a spark of his own anger bubbling inside him, at the fact that apparently he still need to prove his allegiances to her, like she still doesn’t trust her.

“No, no! It means she has the license to take her crap out on me! It means I’m gonna be there for her when she needs me, because she’s the only one I can count on!”

He means everything of what he says, he will not pretend he doesn’t, even if he knows what the words mean to Jo. She flinches like his words burned her, and he feels bad for making her feel like this, for not being able to control himself, think-before-you-speak, figure out how to have an adult conversation with her that doesn’t always end in a screaming match.

Of course, it all goes downhill from there. There’s more shouting, and when she tells him to go, he just retreats out of the room without putting too much of a fight, all his energy drained by the realization that if this hasn’t been the first fight they have like this, it probably isn’t going to be the last. 

The ring is still burning a hole into his pocket, but it doesn’t make him that happy anymore.

*

Turns out, proposals don’t magically fix anything.

He does his best, with the candles and the speech and it’s still not enough, she’s still angry and fights him on it every step of the way. She accuses him of doing it just because of their fight at the hospital, and he tries not to get offended, if adamant that he’s not letting his temper and doubts get the better of him.

When he asks the question the second time, she doesn’t say anything. She just stares at him, eyes wide in panic, the silence stretching to the point when he can’t take it anymore, if she doesn’t know now she won’t in another five minutes.

He throws the ring on the bed, grabs his jacket, walks out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fyi, i wrote that bit about possible izzex babies back in november and then completely forgot about it until i started posting this, but i still feel it is a very accurate representation of my feelings toward s16 *still gets mad a whole two months later*
> 
> anyway, i hope you enjoyed this chapter! it is still very platonic, but i swear things will start to move along soon. next chapter is sound of silence so, huh, you know... consider yourselves warned
> 
> leave a comment, or come say hi on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com), you'll make my day!


	3. i know i've needed you a lot lately

Alex got shot once. 

The memory of it is always there, painfully tugging at the back of his mind and rearing its ugly head when he least expects it. The confused horror of watching Reed in a pool of blood at his feet, and the split-second fear when he realized he was about to encounter the same fate. A lot after that is a blur, and he has vague flashes of Sloan’s voice and Lexie’s face, but still to this day very little of it makes sense to him.

What he forgets about sometimes is everything that came after, when for weeks and weeks he kept taking the stairs to get from the ER to the peds floor, because he was too afraid to step into an elevator again, the image of himself, bloody and lifeless on the floor, attacking him every time the doors slid open in front of him.

He kept waiting for someone to catch onto it, possibly Bailey (if she hadn’t already), and call him out on it, but eventually it was Webber, who made him stand in the elevator and ride it for hours until it felt boring, normal again. It worked, and now elevator rides do nothing for him anymore.

Until now, the elevator making its way down at an unnervingly slow pace, his pager burning in his pocket, the _Grey 911_ message he got from Hunt still on the display.

Once again, he is alone in an elevator and he can’t breathe.

*

He opens the door, and the reality of what happened hits him like a freight train.

Meredith. 

Unconscious on the table.

Warren running the trauma in a frenzy, his voice barely making it over the chaos.

Meredith.

He focuses enough on the voices in the room to gather what has happened. Patient, attack, Meredith found laying on the floor.

_He’s gonna kill him._

Alex can’t breathe, blood ringing in his ears and he doesn’t really listen to any of the orders the others are giving. He feels detached from his body, his brain keeps telling him that _Meredith_ is the only thing that could ground him. He hasn’t been able to tear his eyes away from her pale, unmoving figure since he came through the door, and he’s pretty sure that he’s crying, he feels tears stinging in his eyes and snot running down his nose. He wipes it with the sleeve of his scrubs and he knows he looks the least dignified he’s ever looked on the job. He doesn’t really care.

_He’s gonna kill him._

He feels useless. There’s people running around him, working, while he can’t seem to remember _any_ of the things that he’s supposed to check on when in front of a trauma like this. He’s frozen in place, doesn’t move when Avery’s voice asks him to, it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away, but that’s what it takes for him to shake himself off. He wills his brain to remember, remember what he should be doing in a situation like this, closes his eyes against the strain and more tears fall out. He knows what he needs to do, but he can’t. This isn’t any other patient, it’s…

Meredith.

_He’s gonna kill him._

Meredith opens her eyes, and all the air leaves his lungs in relief and gets sucked back in when she looks up at him. She’s looking for _something_ to focus her vision on, so he steps forward, puts himself in her line of sight and smiles at her, calls out her name.

“Mer.”

It’s a crappy smile that doesn’t reach his eyes (even if he’s so, _oh so glad_ she’s awake), and he hopes she doesn’t see the panic and fear in it, he doesn’t want her to feel like he is gonna break because of this. He makes a decision, right there and then, that he has to make this easy on her, he can’t let her do it alone.

_You are not gonna break, and she will be ok._

He has her hand in his the entire time, he’s vaguely aware of Avery and Webber, usually calm in the face of crisis, looking like they’re about to break too. He barely registers Shepherd curled in a corner on the floor, eyes wide and empty, Webber hunched over her with his hand on her shoulder. He wonders how long she’s been sitting there, he didn’t even notice her come into the room.

He’s still holding Meredith’s hand when Avery pops her jaw open, and the wail of pain that escapes her is enough to make him start crying again.

_He’s gonna kill him._

*

The moment the door to her room clicks shut behind him is the moment he finally allows himself to breathe again.

He takes a few steps backwards, lets himself slide down the wall until he hits the linoleum floor, right there in the hallway, exactly opposite to the door of her room. It still feels like too much distance.

Six hours, Edwards said at some point. Six hours, the neuro attending he doesn’t even know the name of later confirmed. Six hours before they can tell them if there’s going to be lasting neurological damage, if she’ll be ok.

So, he’s gonna sit here for the next six hours and wait.

He would have waited in her room, didn’t want to leave her side, he protested half-heartedly, but Bailey was having none of it, told him there was nothing he could do for her that couldn’t also be done on a chair in the waiting area. She pushed him out of the room and then stared up at him, daring him to contradict her.

(But her remarks had nothing of her usual bite to it, and even through his own hazy exhaustion he could see the softness and the worry in her eyes.)

So, Alex is sitting in the hallway for the next six hours.

He is left alone for the most part of it. One by one, everyone goes back to their regular day, popping in every once in a while to steal worried glances at her still body through the blinds, and at his slumped figure on the floor. If anyone wants to say something, they all think better of it.

He thinks about last night, when he showed up at her house and simply made his way to her bedroom and onto her bed when he didn’t find her still up in the living room. She had been in the bathroom, and when she came out she wasn’t even startled by his sudden presence. She didn’t ask about Jo and the ring, he didn’t feel like telling the story, so they just laid together until he felt like he could be on his own, and went to sleep in the room that was once his. The kids screaming woke him up in the morning.

It feels like it was a lifetime ago, and yet it was just this morning when he was worrying about the fact that he didn’t really have a place to go home to after work. He couldn’t go back to the loft, not really, and as much as Meredith told him he was more than welcome, her house wasn’t his home either. Not that any of that really matters.

Right now, he’s not sure he can leave this hallway anyway.

There are moments, in those six hours, when he forgets for a second what happened: maybe because he dropped his head to his knees, and it’s easy to forget when you’re not looking; but then he would raise his head and he would _see_ her laying there, and he couldn’t hide from reality anymore.

When Izzie was sick and needed surgery, he could at least manage to work through those hours of uncertainty, the fact that he knew what was happening in the OR enough to calm his nerves in some way. He knew what the problem was, what needed to be done in order to fix it, and that the people operating on her knew were the best at their job. Not that he was actually calm, because he would freak out and snap at people, and he was generally unpleasant to be around, but he could at least _move_.

He would walk around the hospital and hope no one would ask him about how Izzie was doing. He would hide out in the tunnels to avoid everyone, and usually Yang or… _Meredith_ would find him, and if it was Yang she would bug him and tease, telling him he should get his act together and just find a surgery to sink his teeth in. 

But if it was Meredith, she would just shoot him a look, give him one of her granola bars and sit next to him, in silence, waiting for him to start talking, or not. Last night comes to his mind again, and he had never really thought about how normal it had become, to go look for her when he feels lost. It’s funny how things can stay the same even after that many years.

He wishes he knew how to do the same for her, be ready to spring into action and return the favor. But she is lying in a hospital bed, no one knows what is actually going to happen and he _can’t move._

There’s not much he can do except sit there as the sky turns darker, the ICU hallway growing quieter and quieter as the visitors in other rooms get ready to leave. Around the five-hours mark he feels, more than sees, something move beside him and it’s Avery, shrugging off his lab coat and haphazardly folding it over his arm before taking a seat on the floor too, right next to him, legs bent and elbows resting on his knees, mirroring Alex’s position exactly.

They exchange a silent look, full of dread and worry and exhaustion, and Alex realizes _this_ is the only thing his friend has been able to think about all day too, even when he was in surgery, or with a patient. He doesn’t begrudge him, any of them, for leaving to go do their jobs and leaving him here alone.

It’s not their fault they have been able to move and he just _can’t._

To be honest, he wishes he could have been able to just get up and go to work and think about Meredith while doing something else, like he used to do, instead of being frozen into place, spending the entire day thinking of what it will be of his life if something goes wrong with her. 

Maggie arrives soon after, hair pinned back and wild, the way she nervously pulls at her fingers reminding him so much of Meredith that it makes his heart shrink and he almost wants to laugh. She turns to them, opens her mouth to say something, but before she can even speak Jackson stops her, shakes his head and offers a sad smile when her face falls.

She doesn’t try to say anything else, but goes around the nurses’ desk and steals a chair, placing it right outside Meredith’s door, and sits on it, her leg immediately starting to bounce nervously.

After that, one by one, every single one of their friends finds their way to her room again. 

Hunt sits on the floor too, and Kepner keeps pacing slowly back and forth down the hallway, her and Avery clearly having multiple silent conversations every time she passes him and they share a look. Alex wonders for a second, not for the first time in recent months, why they’re being complete idiots about the entire situation, but he’s too tired to say anything about it.

Bailey and Webber are standing together by the nurses’ station, far enough from the rest of the group that they aren’t really part of it, but close enough that it feels like they are watching over them.

Seems about right.

Alex notices Webber is studying him with a weird, serious look on his face, but he doesn’t have the time to think too much on it because a voice close to him speaks up: it’s the first words he’s heard in hours now and it takes him a little by surprise.

“I don’t know how we just did that without losing our minds” Jackson says, breaking the silence for the first time, and everyone turns to look at him, almost startled. “I mean, it was… Meredith. How did we run that entire trauma like it was just any patient? I know it happens sometimes, but-”

“We did it because it happened before” Bailey’s voice interrupts him from her place behind the desk, and as usual, when Bailey talks everyone else listens. She is looking straight ahead, into Meredith’s room, not meeting their eyes. “She drowned, and we brought her back.”

There are gasps of surprise, from Jackson and Kepner, and Maggie covering her mouth with eyes full of horror. Even Hunt, who Alex knows for a fact he knew about it, seems struck by it, like he didn’t put the two together until Bailey said it out loud, like he forgot for a second.

Alex hasn’t forgotten, because that’s not something that can ever happen. It can get pushed into the back of your mind with all the other crap, and you can try to work past it even when it threatens to come back out again, ready to start swinging.

He remembers that day and he wishes he didn’t. Yang and Izzie and O’Malley waiting outside her door, Shepherd looking wrecked. He ran then, buried himself in work and used it as an excuse to stay as far away from that room as possible, unable to face the possibility of what could happen.

The fact that now he can’t do anything but _stay_ is really throwing him for a loop.

There’s some commotion down the hall and it’s Torres running towards them, frazzled and confused. She probably got out of surgery and just found out about it, she is still in her surgical cap and gown, open over her scrubs.

“What happened?” she cries, and Alex’s thankful Hunt takes the job to fill her in because right behind Torres there’s Jo and, not for the first time today, he can’t quite breathe right.

He forgot about her.

They broke up _last night_ , and this is the first time he actually thought about her, and that’s only because she showed up in front of him. 

He spent the last six hours doing nothing, talking to no one, thinking, and yet the thought of her never crossed his mind.

People are talking all around them and he just stares at Jo in silence when she meets his eyes, looking for some kind of sign that…

Did she change her mind?

Is she worried about him?

Is she worried about Meredith as much as he is?

She is still looking at him and she seems a little lost, there’s a hint of guilt flashing behind her eyes. She attempts half a smile, and he softens, his heart tugging at him inside his chest. He’s not sure if he smiles back, but she opens her mouth to speak when-

The neuro attending is back.

He peels himself up and off the wall and follows the guy inside, Bailey letting him and Maggie through the door before closing it behind them.

*

He takes a big breath in as he stands outside the front door of the house, lets it all out with a shudder before pushing it open. He finds the kids around the kitchen table, with coloring books and homework, Ellis perched on the nanny’s lap.

They all start yelling excitedly when they see him, Bailey tumbling off his chair when he runs toward him, and then very unceremoniously pulls at his arm until Alex bends down and picks him up.

Alex smiles and greets them back, and he hopes the cheerfulness in his voice is enough to fool them until he will have to crush their tiny hearts with the news of what happened to their mommy.

He absolutely does not want to do this.

He offered, had to, because even after they had a clearer picture of what Meredith’s injuries are (and she’s gonna be fine, _thank you god and Jesus_ , even if it is going to be a marathon), Maggie was crying and shaking so much that there was absolutely no way she was going to be able to tell them herself, or she would scar them for life. And who the hell even knows where Shepherd is right now, so Alex drew the short straw.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” he says, holding Bailey tighter against his hip and making a face at him, “Who wants to have pizza tonight? Uncle Alex is buying.”

Half an hour later the nanny has been sent home, the table is cleared and Zola is helping him take all the cutlery and drinking glasses out of the cabinets to set the table, pizza waiting in its box on the counter.

“Alex, isn’t Mommy coming to eat with us tonight?” she asks him, and even though he knew why he came here tonight, his mind still blanks for a second. He hasn’t forgotten, of course, but being with the kids had felt good, so normal and easy that he had allowed himself to take his mind off of the day for a while. He steadies himself before he starts talking

“You know, this is actually why I am here tonight, I need to talk to you guys about something” he says, in his best neutral voice. He is so used to delivering bad news to children, it’s such and integral part of his job he doesn’t even find it hard anymore, but usually there are parents with the kids, ready to soften the blow and help explain, hug them tight.

This is the first time Alex has to be both the doctor and the parent, to these kids that he loves _so much_ but aren’t even his.

Another big breath. _Here we go._

“Your mom got very hurt this morning” he tells them, not knowing how to sugarcoat this but most importantly not wanting to, “she was working and someone hurt her badly and now she’s gonna have to spend a while in the hospital.”

There are three pairs of eyes looking up at him, and he is surprised that no one is crying right now, not even Ellis, and he wonders how much of it they are actually taking in.

“Where is she hurting?” Bailey asks in a small voice, face buried in his plate, picking at the pizza with his fork.

“She broke her leg, and her arm.” This is easy, the technical, clinical part. He knows he can talk about this and keep his voice level, this is what he’s trained to do. “They put metal wires in her mouth, a little like Zola’s braces, so that the bones there can grow back properly too. But Jackson says he’s gonna take them out as soon as he can.” He smiles, tries to be reassuring even when inside he’s screaming with his ow worry. 

He considers for a moment if he should tell them about her hearing. As a rule he doesn’t like lying to kids, and he thinks that they should know what is going on with their mother, it will feel less scary and they will feel more in control, but at the same time the uncertainty of what will be of that is still too much to process even for him. He decides to leave it off the table until things are more certain, and he can tell the kids exactly what is going on. There’s no point in making them worry if things are going to solve themselves on their own.

“Can we go see her?” Zola asks, her features rearranged in a calm, collected expression. He wonders when the hell she grew up so much.

“Not for a little while, Zo. It will be scary to see her hurt like that, and neither me nor your mom want you to be scared, is that alright?”

Zola nods, and finally digs into the food in front of her, her siblings following her cue. They all eat in silence for a while, but Alex knows that went surprisingly well: they are mulling over things, probably have a million other questions, but at least they don’t seem scared or confused. He figures they know more about injuries and recovery than the average kid, and they seem satisfied with what he gave them for now.

There’s a couple more random questions throughout the night ( _is she gonna be able to eat ice cream with her braces,_ and _can we draw pictures to send her_ ), around mouthfuls of toothpaste and while Alex struggles to change them into their pajamas, but he eventually manages to wrangle all of them into bed. He leaves the light on at the end of the hallway, and he goes back downstairs, opens himself a beer.

He falls onto the couch and closes his eyes, head dropping back on the cushions. It feels like he’s been awake for a week.

When he hears the key turning at the door he doesn’t move, only opens one eye because he’s sure it’s just going to be Maggie walking in, hopefully a little calmer and less of a mess than how he saw her last.

But it’s Shepherd, who stumbles into the living room and bumps into the small table near the door, knocking over the dish where they put their keys, giggling when, in an attempt to pick it back up, she loses her balance and ends up falling face first into the carpet.

“If you keep this up, you’re gonna wake the kids” he tell her, voice neutral, doing his best to keep any annoyance out of it. He still gets up from the couch and goes to empty his beer down the sink. It’s better not to give her any distractions.

“Good!” she announces, cheery, when she manages so sit properly, still on the floor. “I really want to see them.”

“No.”

“Alex, come on!” she pleads with him, whiny and _still too loud._

“You’re kidding, right? Absolutely not.”

“I am their aunt, I have the right.” She’s slurring her words a little, eyes glazed over. “You are just _some guy,_ I don’t have to listen to you” she tells him, fiercely, and he is always amazed at how drunk people can switch between moods so fast. She is angry at him now, clearly, but it is a sort of empty anger, like her body is telling her to act that way but her brain can’t quite catch up as to why she should, and simply going with it.

“Why don’t you sit on the couch for a second, and when you feel better we will talk about it” he says slowly, and he watches her crawl across the room until she reaches the couch, which she uses to prop herself up and onto. Alex sits next to her, offers the glass of water he filled in the kitchen.

They are silent for a while, Amelia gulping down the water like she’s just come back from the desert. When she’s done, she turns to look at him with watery eyes.

“I am sorry” she says in a small voice. Another sudden mood change.

“About?”

“I was supposed to go see her on a consult. It’s my fault she’s gonna die, it’s always my fault they alwa-” she stops, and turns from him when she can’t stand his gaze anymore.

“Amelia, she’s not gonna die” he tells her, tone still neutral. “She’s not gonna die, and it’s no one’s fault but the guy’s who attacked her.” The irrational anger from this morning comes back. He tries to calm his head before speaking again: “And you know what? Not even that, he didn’t mean to.”

It’s liberating, in a way, letting go of the fury that has been simmering inside him all day, because he realizes now it’s not going to make a difference, not to the thing that really matters, Meredith getting better.

“But what was the point of it then if no one is to blame?” she asks him, sliding down the couch until she has her head on his shoulder. He thinks she might be crying, he can feel his shirt getting damp. The whole situation feels weird, being this close feels weird. To be honest, he is not the type to be physically affectionate with anyone, really.

“I have absolutely no idea” he sighs.

*

_This is gonna be fine,_ he thinks as he makes his way to Meredith’s room, right on time for the evening visitation hours. He checked her chart which looked good, and spoke to Avery and Torres, who were both cautiously optimistic about her progress. He has also a bag full of her kids’ drawings and favorite toys, which he has been instructed to _bring to Mommy so that she can feel better soon_ by a very serious-looking Bailey and Zola.

He also, somehow, managed to get a full night’s sleep after he called Webber and sorted out Amelia’s living situation for the time being, and handed off all his patients to Arizona until he figures out what the next few weeks will look like for Meredith. He spent the day cleaning around the house, played with the kids, made dinner and packed her a bag of essentials with Maggie’s help. Today felt normal in the weirdest way possible, and he’s almost amazed at himself at how fast he was able to bounce back from yesterday’s panic and feelings of hopelessness

So yes, he feels cautiously optimistic as he walks into her roo- _oh, crap._

She is awake, for a change, but she’s crying and he forgets everything he was thinking, all positive thoughts thrown out the window.

“Hey” he calls for her, and he knows she can’t actually hear him, but he doesn’t know what else to do when trying to get her attention. “What's wrong, Meredith?” he tries again, getting closer to her bed and making sure she actually saw him. He checks on her vitals and the state of the IV bags, his training kicking in, before he turns his attention back to her.

“Hey” he says softly right into her ear as he climbs onto her bed. Her broken limbs are on the other side of her but he still fears he’s gonna crush her, so he puts his arm on her pillow and around her head to prop himself up. His instinct is to hug her as tight as he can, but he’s too aware of her injuries to try.

She is still crying, hasn’t even looked at him or turned in his direction, and he hates that he can’t just ask her what is wrong, hates that he can’t fix any of it because he is not even sure of what she needs. They have gotten so attuned to each other over the years that other people liked to joke that they don’t need to talk to know what the other is thinking. He usually scoffed at the idea, but he secretly used to believe it too.

It took her not being able to hear him to realize how stupid that is.

He’s whispering encouragements into her ear, and he doesn’t even know if he’s doing it for her or for himself at this point. He likes to think he’s doing it for her, but he knows part of it is because he can’t deal with seeing her like this, and this is just him blindly reacting, finding ways to protect her. 

“Just get it out, get it all out. The tears, all the…” he’s whispering, hoping that she can at least feel the vibrations of his voice on her ear. He’s trying to be gentle, reassuring, hopes that his tone can somehow reach her even in this way. But it’s still him, and it’s still Meredith, and their relationship has always come with a healthy dose of snark and teasing. 

“God, you've got a lot of snot. I'm serious, I mean, you might have a serious condition. Come on, woman, blow your damn nose.” He hands her a tissue, and she’s wiping her eyes with it while she laughs a watery laugh, the sound weird when muffled by the metal wires holding her jaw together.

He is so caught up in the relief of the fact that she stopped crying, that he forgets for a second that it is _not_ normal that she’s following directions.

“Hang on. Mer, can you hear me?” he asks, pulling himself off of the bed a little so that he can look at her better. She turns, and she looks at him too, and she looks just as surprised as he is, like it hadn’t occurred to her either that that wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Mm-hmm” she replies, and it’s not even a real sentence, _not even a real word_ , but it fills him with so much _relief_ , and happiness, that he thinks he might start to cry right here.

She heard him.

“You can hear me?” he asks again, to make sure, her answer is the same humming sound as before, a little more sure of herself this time. She is laughing, and he is laughing trying not to cry, and he checks on her hearing by snapping his fingers against her ears, the peds surgeon training kicking in, an automatic response.

He asks again and again, too stunned to say anything else, and her face lights up in the most perfect way and he can’t believe they are out of these particular woods, can’t believe the hardest step toward recovery is behind them.

They melt into a fit of giggles and he drops his head to hers, forehead to forehead they lock eyes and he doesn’t want to think about the fact that twenty-four hours ago he wasn’t sure she would even wake up.

He is a surgeon, he knows he is supposed to let her rest properly, and that she needs to lay in bed in the right position for her fractures to set properly.

Bailey is the one that finds them asleep together in bed the next morning, the kids’ drawings and plush toys covering the bed. She yells at him for ten minutes straight about protocol and improper conduct and Meredith’s injuries, before Meredith starts giggling and suddenly Bailey is not mad at him anymore.

*

He sees Jo around the hospital the next couple weeks. 

She got off the ortho rotation and she is supposed to be on peds, and even if he’s still on leave, every once in a while he goes up to the ward to check on patients and stay on top of paperwork, so he sees her more than he’d like.

It’s always awkward, and they both do that thing where they see the other person and they hide their face into a patient’s chart so they can pretend they didn’t. 

It’s driving him crazy because it is so _stupid,_ but also because halfway through the third time doing this little dance he realized he doesn’t actually care. He’s doing it more to keep up the pretence than because he feels weird seeing her. 

Somewhere between Jo turning down his proposal (again), and stepping into the role of nanny and caregiver, he forgot to check in on how the refusal actually made him feel. 

He doesn’t feel the pull toward her he always used to: before, every time they fought and she made that sad and guilty pout, something inside him wanted nothing more than to try and wipe it off of her face, but now…

...now he looks at her, and that same something is mildly annoyed with her, that she gets to break his heart so completely and then still expect him to pick up the pieces of her messed up feelings.

He really doesn’t feel like doing it anymore, not when he is trying to hold together everything else that is important in his life.

So, he leaves Jo to awkwardly stare at her chart and goes back downstairs to Meredith’s room.

*

“So, you remember what we talked about, right? Mommy won’t be able to talk, or move much, so we’ll have to be very careful ok?”

Both Bailey and Zola look up at him with a tense expression on their faces. They haven’t seen their mother in almost a month, only heard about how she’s doing from Alex and Maggie, and April that one time she came over to the house because it was Bailey’s birthday and she’s the only one they trusted to actually bake a birthday cake that wouldn’t taste like death. 

All three kids have been real troopers about all of this, but Alex is half-convinced they still think something far worse has happened to their mom, and no one told them but just kept lying that she was just hurt in the hospital. 

They are children, ‘getting hurt’ for them means getting a really bad scrape in the playground that heals in a week, max. It’s no wonder they don’t understand that you can get hurt in a way that forces you to stay in bed for weeks on end. 

“Ok, let’s go. Come on” he says in a cheerful tone as he opens the door, balancing Ellis on his hip, a duffle on his shoulder, holding Zola’s hand in his own.

It goes horribly downhill from there. 

Meredith pushes too hard, she’s so happy to see her kids that she doesn’t realize she’s being too aggressive about it, trying to make everything perfect. Ellis starts to cry, picking up on the tension in the room, Zola discretely pulls at him forcefully to signal that she wants to leave, and he doesn’t have much choice but to give in to her. 

He shares a look with Mer, mouths a _don’t worry, I’ll be back_ that he hopes she sees in her very frazzled, hurt, heartbroken state.

He closes the door behind him and he pretends not to hear the wail of pain coming from her room as they walk to the cafeteria, his own heart breaking too.

*

That evening, Maggie takes the two youngest home, and Alex stays behind with Zola. 

The girl had been unsure at first, standing awkwardly by the door while Alex made his way to Meredith’s bed and fussed over her, helping her sit up straighter, making sure the IV lines weren’t tangled. Meredith lets him manhandle her without complaining, too focused on the girl in the room with them, smiling warmly and never taking her eyes off of her, trying to put her at ease.

She’s calmer than this morning, and Zola must sense it, because she eventually takes slow steps toward the bed until she can grab Meredith’s hand with both of hers, and smiles back at her mother.

So this is how Alex spends his night: sitting on a chair at the foot of Meredith’s bed, ready to catch Zola in case she falls over from her place at the end of the mattress, where she’s sitting with her legs crossed and talking a mile a minute. 

Meredith just listens, even if they haven’t put her wires back in yet and she could talk if she wanted (Alex talked to Avery, who assured him it would be fine if she stayed out of them for the night, but he still worries), but it seems like she’s perfectly happy just listening to her daughter tell her about her days, and her friends, and all the nonsensical anecdotes kids her age are always full of. She is smiling wide, eyes glassy with unshed tears, and it strikes him just how long it’s been since he’s seen her like this. 

How long it’s been since he saw her happy. 

It comes the time for Zola to go home and the girl, ever the older sibling, busies herself with packing all the things that got thrown around the room back into her pink backpack, while Alex hunches over Meredith’s side.

“I’ll bring her home and come back ok?” he whispers, their faces close, “Don’t wait for me to get here, go to sleep.”

“Alex, you don’t have to-” she tries halfheartedly, voice sore and croaky.

“Yeah well, I will anyway so... shut up” he scoffs, and she smiles at his annoyance, and he feels like things are maybe starting to fit into place again. 

He kisses her on the temple, and she turns her head to kiss him back before all her focus shifts back to Zola. She gestures until the girl climbs onto the bed again, this time closer to Meredith, and Alex watches them hug awkwardly around the cast on Meredith’s arm, squeezing tight before letting go, Zola jumping off the bed and coming to stand by his side, immediately claiming his hand in hers.

“Goodnight Mommy, feel better soon”, and the look on Meredith’s face tells him she’s going to cry again as soon as they close the door behind them, so he hurries the girl out of the room, throwing Meredith one last glance and a reassuring smile.

Zola starts chatting away the moment the door closes, he looks down on her to smile and laugh, and when he looks back up there’s Jo, standing frozen in the middle on the hallway, staring at them. He stares back at her.

He knows why she’s this shocked, he’s aware that he spent today walking around the hospital with Meredith’s kids on his arm and holding his hand, and that the nurses have been whispering non-stop about what a _dad look_ it was. He pushed it out of his head, because he’s not that stupid that he doesn’t realize what it looks like, but he also doesn’t give a damn about what people that don’t understand his and Meredith’s relationship think.

But Jo, he thought that Jo understood, and maybe it hadn’t dawned on him until this moment that she would have feelings about it. He’s been so busy with everything else, and he’s been so adamant on keeping her out of his head that he hadn’t considered she would probably be seeing him around like this today.

She must be feeling like crap. They fought about Izzie and she freaked out so much when she thought he had kids with her, he had to reassure her he didn’t, that he wasn’t sure he even wanted to, and then less than six months pass and he’s walking around with another woman’s kids following him around like ducklings.

Meredith is not just another woman, of course. But maybe Jo is allowed to feel a little weird about it.

He’s not sure if it was a sudden realization brought on just by the fact that he saw her, or that since Meredith started getting better he got to breathe a little and stuff was starting to come back out, but the encounter, as brief as it is (Jo bolts as soon as she realizes he’s seen her), leaves him with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach all the drive back to the house, and then to the hospital again.

When he comes back to the hospital, Meredith is already asleep, and he considers waking her up to talk about it.

_She’d deserve it, with all the times she did it to me,_ he thinks, and the pettiness of it all is what makes him unceremoniously drop the bed guard down, not caring if the noise wakes her up. That was half the point of doing it, after all.

She opens her eyes, startled, and she lets out an alarmed grunt while she watches him climb into bed with her. Like the last time, he props himself with his elbow on her pillow to try and not crush her, but she’s better now, sturdier, so he’s not really worried when he gets a little too close. It’s not his fault these beds are so small.

“You better watch out, or Bailey is gonna yell at us again” she says in her croaky voice. He makes a mental note of remembering not to let her talk too much, or Avery is gonna have his ass in the morning.

“If she does, I’ll tell her this was completely your idea” he shrugs, and she loses herself in a fit of giggles that makes the bed shake. These beds are both too small and too wobbly, and suddenly he feels a tiny pang of sorrow for ignoring his patients’ complaints all these years.

“So… Today went well” he says, tone soft, waiting to see her reaction. She looks up at him shocked and amused, _I’m not sure I’d say that_ painted all over her face. He smirks.

“Well, _eventually_ it went well” he offers instead.

Her eyes softens, she nods, and she burrows herself further into him, resting her head on his chest. “Yeah ok, it did. Thank you, Alex.” She moves her healthy arm, the one squished between their bodies, until it’s wiggled free and she grasps his hand in hers and squeezes.

It’s not like they’re physically closed-off friends.

They hug, kiss each other on the cheek and forehead when the other needs a pick me up, have gone dancing (or had dance parties at the house, more likely) and turned quite a few heads because no one ever believes two _just friends_ could hang off each other like that.

Hell, they routinely hijack each other beds and showers, it would be absurd to read this much into some hand holding.

But he knows Meredith. He knows she doesn’t usually seek out comfort. She’s gotten better over the years at accepting it when someone offers it to her, but she will rarely take it for herself first. So the combination of the hand holding and the cuddling is sending off alarms signals in his head.

They are in the exact same position as the night she got her hearing back, and he tells himself that this is probably just an extreme response to the extreme stress of today, hurt calls for comfort in equal measures.

She’s drawing circles on his knuckles with her thumb, and they lock eyes when she lifts her head from his chest to look at him. She looks relaxed, maybe simply from the fact that he just woke her up after what was a stressful and tiring day. His face must not match hers, however, because her brows quickly furrow and a question mark appears between them.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, voice still gravelly for the prolonged lack of use, and he has to think on it a second before he remembers why he had wanted to wake her up in the first place.

“Just- I saw Jo while I was with Zola earlier.”

“Was she horrible? Do we still hate her?” she immediately dives in, pulling back a little to straighten herself and look at him better. The sudden lack of contact somehow makes him even more aware of how uncharacteristically close she was before. 

“Mer, we never hated her” he scoffs, and instinctively shoots a glance outside on the hall, painfully aware Jo or anyone else, really, could be easily looking in on them right now.

“Maybe you were still undecided, but I was hating her a little bit on my own, just for your sake.”

“You’d probably hate her even if it had nothing to do with me.”

She doesn’t answer to that, suddenly deep in thought, munching on the inside of her cheek like she’s trying to keep herself from saying something.

“Stop that, you’ll mess up your jaw and Avery will kill you” he tells her, frees his hand from hers to poke at her cheek with a finger. She huffs, relaxing her jaw, clearly annoyed at him scolding her, before she’s smiling softly.

“You don’t hate Jo” she says, almost amused, like she’s an all-knowing oracle telling him his fortune.

“I don’t know what I think of her.”

“ _Jo_ doesn’t hate _you._ ”

“Yeah, well, she didn’t want to marry me. Twice.” He knows he is sulking now, and he’s not sure if this is what he was looking for when he decided to wake her up, but at least he feels like he’s working through something, in some way.

“It took Derek and I more than two proposals before it finally worked out, too.”

“You and Derek were special.”

“You and Jo can be special too, if it’s really what you want.” She takes a longer pause, and he looks down confused, to see her studying him. He’s not sure what he is supposed to say. “Is it?” she pushes again, “what you want? You and Jo.” She looks a little sad, and he silently kicks himself for bringing up Derek like that. 

He’s still figuring out when talking about him is fine and when it sends her spinning. He can see it in her eyes, her rewinding the memories on their relationship in her head, but it’s not the only thing, he realises. There is something else about his answer (or lack thereof, so far) that is bothering her, and for the life of him he can’t really figure out what it is. 

“Is _I don’t know yet_ an acceptable answer?”

“Come back tomorrow, after I get my wires back in, and I promise I will say nothing about it” she says, mock-serious, and she lights up when he pretends to groan at her lame joke.

The drop the subject after that, steer the conversation to her kids, hospital gossip, the movie he watched with Maggie the other night. It’s light and easy, she mostly listens to him talk without interjecting much, her head back on his chest and her hand finding his again.

This time, they do the right thing and he goes to sleep on the armchair in the corner of the room instead of in bed next to her. Bailey still finds some other reason to yell at him in the morning.

*

It’s some time still before Meredith finally gets discharged, Alex brings her home when he knows no one will be there, trying to make it an easy and quiet process.

He fusses over her constantly, when she has to get in and out of the car, walking the steps to the front door. She indulges him for some reason, which makes him feel better, shakes some of his anxiety off of him.

When she tells him to go back to Jo it shocks him into silence, and he watches her intently for a long moment, trying to find something in her eyes that tells him she’s not serious.

She is. Or, she looks like she is.

So he does because, more than anything, he has learned to trust Meredith’s guts, and at the end of the day it’s not like a part of him doesn’t still want to be with Jo anyway.

He goes back to the loft, and they don’t speak but hug, he walks Jo backwards into the space and to the bed. They fall into it together, his body pressing hers into the mattress and still neither of them says anything, until control starts to slip away from him. He covers her mouth with his again and again until they’re both panting, and talking is not really necessary anymore.

He lays in bed with Jo next to him and tries to convince himself Meredith was right, that he wants this too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this ended up having a lot more missing scene/original stuff than the other chapters, but SoS is such a meredith-focused episode it was just bound to happen, i guess. still hella platonic, i know, but we're getting there i swear
> 
> if you want to leave a comment, or come say hi on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com) you'll make me super happy!


	4. you said i would be okay

On the first week of his residency Alex got this close to probably killing a patient.

He was a jackass, and way too cocky, and wanted to make himself look smart in front of some hot nurse he doesn’t even remember the name of. 

He got a stupid question wrong and he made an ass of himself in front of the Chief of Surgery. He also pissed off this blonde chick, who he had made some crude comment about earlier that day, and she retaliated by making him look like a fool, looking him straight in the eye with a smirk and a killer glare before jumping in and giving the correct answer. She earned a praise from the Chief, and Alex got a scolding and a warning to do better, the hot nurse laughing at him from her station.

Back then, he thought that was the most humiliating thing he’d ever gone through, and that he’d just made what would be his greatest enemy and competition for the rest of his career. 

Right now, his greatest enemy and competition is making him fold tiny socks while they watch some random telemarketing scam on the tv, sound off, at two o’clock in the morning. There is a pile of clothes already folded on his right, the laundry basket capsized over the coffee table, its contents spilling out everywhere in front of him. 

“I don’t understand why we can’t just do it tomorrow and go to sleep.”

“Because tomorrow tiny feet will need tiny socks to wear. Do you want them to go to school without socks? God, and you call yourself a peds surgeon” Meredith retorts serious, a frown on her face while she aggressively grabs another handful of clothing to place closer to where she’s sitting on the couch.

She’s supposed to still be on bedrest, her leg not fully recovered and, even if she has her brace on, she has to keep weight off it as much as possible and have it raised when she’s sitting.

But she’s been home two weeks now, and even if you didn’t know her you could tell she’s been growing increasingly restless. And kind of mean.

“You do know I don’t live here, right? I will have to drive home at some point.”

“Oh, whatever, Wilson will live. If it gets really late you can crash in Amelia’s bedroom, god knows where she is these days” she spits out, and he risks a side glance at her.

He has a vague idea of why Meredith is so mad at her sister that she keeps making these catty comments. His last interaction with Shepherd is still vivid in his memory, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the issue between the two of them is, but he hasn’t tried to broach the subject just yet. He’ll give her a little more time.

“It would be nice for me to spend some time in my own bed too, sometimes. I slept here eight nights in the past fifteen days” he reminds her, and she has at least the decency of looking a little guilty. 

When she was discharged, she had admitted that she had been needing him a lot, before pushing him back to Jo, but the combination of her still requiring a lot of help, and him somehow feeling uneasy about leaving her, has meant that he still ends up spending way too much time at the house anyway.

Jo clearly has opinions about it, but for some reason she’s been keeping her mouth shut about it and he always feels way more tense around her that it is normal for a couple that just got back together. They still aren’t talking much.

“Alright” he finally gives up, ready to put both of them out of their misery, “I count at least six socks already folded, and that’s enough to cover everyone’s feet for tomorrow. We’ll deal with the rest another time. Come on, up you get.”

He helps her up from the couch, and Meredith wobbles a bit from the new position, she has to hold on to his shoulders to keep her balance. He stands still, lets her lean on him until she’s ready to move on her own. He looks to check if she’s alright, and he finds her face very close, her cheeks a little pink, flushed. He makes a mental note to turn down the thermostat while they go upstairs.

He waits for her to be finished in the bathroom, and then helps her to bed, putting all essential items, like her phone and the crutches, within reach.

He bids her goodnight, and makes the long drive back to the loft. At this point, it’s so early in the morning it wouldn’t even make much sense to go to sleep, but the thought of sliding into bed next to Jo, even for just a couple hours, sounds suddenly incredibly tempting.

Except for the fact that when he gets home, the only thing that’s there to greet him is a note on the kitchen table, informing him she went in early to take an ER page.

 _I thought you’d be back early enough that I could tell you in person,_ the note says, the tone behind it impossible to miss.

He doesn’t know why he expected anything different.

*

“Hey” Meredith greets him, surprised when she gets into the passenger’s seat and she sees him behind the wheel of her car, “wasn’t Maggie supposed to pick me up?”

“She’s still doing that DeLuca thing…” Alex tells her, and when he sees her smirking at his words with an evil glint on her face he rolls his eyes at her, “and please don’t start, I have no intentions of talking about that, I still think it’s ridiculous. But she asked me to cover for her.”

“I’m not some invalid that you have to take shifts taking care of” she complains, struggling to work the seat belt around her body when it gets caught on her crutches. She curses under her breath, and she seems generally in an awful mood, which has been lasting so long now that he doesn’t even notice it anymore.

“How was the first therapy session?” he ignores her, changing the subject before she can start on one of her usual rants.

“You know, the usual weirdness, having to catch the guy up on all my fucked up life.”

“Tell me you didn’t try to scare him off” he pleads, stealing a look at her while he pulls out of parking.

“Why, Evil Spawn, you’re offending me now, you know I wouldn’t do that” she pretends to act innocent, her eyes shining with mischief, and it makes him bark out a dark laugh as he gets onto the road, directed back home.

*

He tells them to get out of the house and leave her alone, and this is how he finds himself on the porch with Maggie, Torres, and Bailey of all people, all of them unsure of what to do now that the night they had planned was cut short.

“Didn’t she seem weird to you? She did, she seemed weird, right?” Maggie immediately starts. He wants to tell her to let it go, that this isn’t unusual for Meredith, but before he can open his mouth Bailey interjects.

“She’s a grown woman, Pierce. Let her be if she wants to be alone, we should all go try and get some of that sex you were all talking about earlier” Bailey says, cool as ever. Torres bursts into a fit of laughter and he feels his ears getting hotter with embarrassment. He will never get used to Bailey being this friendly in front of him, it just feels wrong.

He follows the group for a few steps down the driveway before he remembers he can’t exactly go home tonight. Jo very explicitly asked him not to show up, which in and on itself is a whole can of worms he doesn’t want to spend too much energy thinking about, surely doesn’t want to unpack all of it with this particular group of people, standing on the sidewalk in front of Meredith’s house.

“Huh, erm-” he stops walking, and the three women turn around to look at him curiously. “I, huh, forgot my keys inside. Go on, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Maggie and Torres seem convinced by his poor attempt at a lie and wave back at him before stalking toward their cars. Bailey stays behind, studying him with her best patented _Bailey_ look. It’s been ten years and Alex still hates that he can’t never tell a lie without her catching on. He’s not sure what she thinks she’s unveiled, but Alex can see the second she decides to let him off the hook, her expression changing and the crease on her forehead relaxing.

“Make it quick Karev, you don’t want to be late for the sex” she deadpans, her voice stretching the vowel in the last word and his eyes open so wide he fears they might fall out of their sockets. She just smirks at him then, more than content with the reaction she got out of him, clearly, and turns to her car too, giggling under her breath.

He is definitely never going out with Bailey, ever again.

He makes his way back to the house, knocks a few times as a warning before letting himself in. He can hear Meredith shuffling around in the kitchen, and he closes the door with a little more force than what he’d normally use, to let her know someone is in the house with her.

“I told you I wanted to be alone, you didn’t need to co- Alex” she calls, walking back into the living room and finally seeing him there, “why are you here?”

“Jo wanted to have a friends’ night at the loft, and apparently I’m not allowed” he shrugs, in a poor attempt to act unbothered by it, “so thanks for kicking us out but I’m staying here anyway.”

She purses her lips, and he can tell she wants to say something mean about Jo, but she is trying to police herself. Finally, she settles on something, her tone faking some kind of understanding. “Well, you _would_ be kind of in the way for ladies’ night.”

“Warren is there too” he corrects her, not sure why he’s making it worse for himself, but he watches her stifle a laugh before she composes herself, as she simply gestures to the bowls on the coffee table, wordlessly asking him for help.

He didn’t want to do this big night in thing to begin with, had only said yes to Maggie’s constant nagging because he knew he had to get out of the house anyway, and this way at least it was somewhere comfortable. Nights like this easily get on his nerves, and he knows they get on Meredith’s too, so it wasn’t really a surprise to him when she kicked them out, and it’s not really a surprise either that now that it’s just the two of them and they can be as silent or as talkative as they want, he is immediately enjoying it ten times more.

Meredith’s starting to relax as they clean up together in comfortable silence, and he knows she’s feeling way better already, too.

“How are really things with Jo?” she asks after a while, and he is surprised by the question. She doesn’t usually ask him outright about things like that: she is perceptive, and she likes to observe, and she knows him better than probably anyone, so when she actually asks or talks to him about Jo she starts with a specific thing, maybe something she witnessed, or picked up on. It would be annoying as hell, if it weren’t for the fact that he does the exact same thing to her most of the time.

“Things are fine, Mer” he tries to cut it short, but he knows he’s doing a poor job at covering the truth, and she can tell for sure, her eyebrows shooting up high on her forehead.

“I don’t think they are, or you wouldn’t be here, you’d be at home.”

“I like being here” he’s quick to remind her. He’s not sure why her words feel like an accusation, or why is is getting so defensive about it. It’s a legitimate question, from someone that cares about him, who’s just trying to help, but it still rubs him the wrong way. He tries not to sound too tense. “It’s not an imposition.”

“And I like you being here” she reassures him, voice going softer, like she caught the accusative edge in her own tone too and is trying to make up for it, “but I can’t help but feel like you two are acting weird around each other, and I’m not sure why.”

Alex stares at her for a second, and there’s genuine concern in her eyes. He finally exhales a deep breath, shoulders sagging as he lets himself flop on one of the chairs of the kitchen table.

“I don’t know how things are. I swear Mer, I can’t figure it out” he admits, a hint of a plea in his tone. It’s been weeks of him tiptoeing around Jo like he’s been waiting for her to go off like a bomb, and he’s finally gotten to a point where he’s tired of pretending this is all going to solve itself.

Meredith walks towards him, limping a little, and sits on the chair next to him. She nudges at his calf and smirks, quirking up an eyebrow, until he gets her point. Alex moves the chair back a little until there’s enough space for her to lift her leg onto his lap. He instinctively drops his hands onto it, and starts drawing mindless patterns with his palms while he thinks, Meredith adjusting herself on the chair but other than that patiently waiting for him to speak.

“I feel like she thinks I’m the one that’s already checked out. She thinks that I’ve already decided I don’t want to be with her anymore. And because she thinks that, she acts like she is too.”

“That makes no sense” she tells him, fierce and overprotective. There’s a small hint of annoyance in it, and he wishes that sometimes she wouldn’t get this worked up over his love life. “She took you back. She wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t think you’re in it completely.”

“I don’t know why she did it. I’m not even sure why _I_ went back, beside the fact that you told me to.”

He expects her to respond to that, and he’s surprised when she doesn’t. She is biting her lip, brow furrowed, and she is clearly upset about something he just said, and he’s about to tell her she shouldn’t be this mad at Jo when she speaks up, her voice dropping to a murmur.

“Please don’t say that.”

“What?”

“Please don’t say that it’s my fault that you went back to her, that you’re unhappy because I’m the one who told you to do it.” She’s getting angry now, her voice picking up volume, power.

_Where the hell is this coming from?_

“Mer, I did not say that. Of course it’s not your fault. I just meant that I’m not sure I would have don-”

“...You wouldn’t have done it if I had just left it alone and not meddled in your life?” She is half-shouting, and she retreats her leg from his lap, the sharp drag of the chair against the floor startling him more than anything else. He looks up at her, lost. “I tried to be selfless and do the right thing, and this is what I get. No one is happy.”

She is pacing across the kitchen, and there’s a split second moment where he worries that she shouldn’t be walking around without crutches, before what she’s saying actually registers.

“Wait, why are _you_ unhappy in all of this?”

She stops, stares at him, and he wishes he could read her mind because first her eyes say _you’re an idiot if you don’t know_ , but then it turns into something different, like she’s ashamed of something and she’s internally beating herself up for letting it slip out like that.

“Don’t worry about it” she blurts out quickly, he can tell she’s forcing her posture to look a little more relaxed (and isn’t that an oxymoron), her voice trying to fake the same sentiment, but he can tell there’s still some tension in it. “You should just go.”

“Mer, wha-” he wants to reason, because she’s more upset now than she was when the others were here and he feels like it’s his fault, somehow. This went from a perfectly quiet night to some sort of disaster he can’t figure out the cause of, the whiplash of it making him dizzy.

“Alex, really, I’m fine” she tells him and the smile she gives him is too tight, too strained, and he doesn’t believe her for one second, “I’m gonna go check on the kids, and then maybe read a book, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Before he can stop her, she has disappeared up the stairs, and when he hears the bedroom door slam all the way downstairs, he finally takes it as a sign that she doesn’t want him there anymore.

He still has no clue why.

*

Eventually, Jo decides to forgive him.

He still isn’t sure of what he did that needed forgiveness, or what happened that made her finally change her mind, but she kisses him in the back of Meredith’s car one night and a wave of relief washes over him when their lips touch, he wraps his arms around Jo’s waist to pull her as close as he can despite the seatbelts trapping them in their seats.

What he told Meredith was the truth, and he is still trying to figure out in his own head why he’s so adamant on making this relationship work, but he can’t lie to himself by saying that a little tiny part of him isn’t glad this particular storm is now behind them.

He is lost in the moment, but he catches Maggie, her voice faint like he’s hearing it from a distance, trying to catch Meredith’s attention from behind the wheel.

There’s a split second where he glances at the front of the car and his eyes meet Meredith’s in the rearview mirror, and the smile she shoots at him doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

*

There is some kind of irony to the fact that he went from Jo being weird and pretending everything was fine while Meredith was being very supportive, to Meredith barely talking to him while Jo is trying to be the perfect girlfriend. 

He can’t seem to catch a break, but he can’t just _stop_ seeing Meredith because she’s acting funny around him: he is still helping a little around the house, he’s still taking the kids home after daycare when he knows Maggie and Meredith have surgery running late. Plus, he’s stubborn enough he just decided he is gonna ride this out, continue being around until she gets over whatever it is that has got her so pissed and she actually talks to him.

It’s a friday, Bailey and Zola have been invited to a sleepover with Sophia, and Alex’s stacking legos with Ellis on the living room rug while Meredith watches them from her place on the couch, smiling into her glass of wine. So far they have managed to have a nice, pleasant evening, so far he hasn’t said anything that would cause her to snap at him, like she has taken to do way too much lately.

They are waiting for Ellis’ bedtime, so that they can go over his game plan on a surgery he has in a couple days: the patient is a preteen with gallstones, unusual but not that serious, but he’s also had surgery on his abdomen before and the scarring worries him a little, and that’s why he asked her for a consult and some help figuring out a possible alternate approach. 

“She only wants to play legos when you’re over here” she muses, and he gloats a little, pride bubbling in his chest, he runs his fingers absentmindedly over the girl’s head.

“Maybe she just likes that I always let her destroy my side of the tower and I don’t yell at her like Bailey does” he tells her, which makes her laugh, and he likes this, the easy and familiar, where he doesn’t have to pretend to be such a hardass all the time. He misses having these times with Meredith, when lately they always turn stiff and uncomfortable around each other.

There’s a knock on the front door, and it’s not late enough that it’s weird that someone’s coming over, but it’s later than normal for a home visit, even by the standards of this house. Alex pushes himself off the floor and goes to answer it, finds Avery with a nervous, almost apologetic smile on in face and a six-pack in his hands. There’s also a bottle of tequila precariously sticking out of his coat’s pocket, and it’s immediately very clear what kind of night this is going to be.

“I’m sorry, I was just-” Jackson says, stumbling over his words a little, and it is so not like him that Alex is instantly moved by it.

“You’re kidding, right? Come on, come in” he moves to let him through, and closes the door behind him while he hears Meredith’s voice greeting Jackson in the next room. He comes in and sees that Jackson has put all the bottles down on the coffee table, shrugging off his coat and taking his place on the rug next to Ellis.

The girl has pushed herself up using Jackson’s legs as support, and is now studying him curiously, slapping her hand on his face to run it over his stubble. Jackson puffs up his cheeks at her, and Ellis giggles happily before fully climbing into his lap and sitting down on his legs. He looks slightly panicked for a second, like he’s not really sure what he’s supposed to do with a toddler her age, but he takes Ellis’ hands in his anyway and tentatively bounces her a little up and down. Ellis loses herself in a fit of delighted giggles, and Jackson’s face instantly splits into a wide smile.

Meredith laughs, and when Alex goes to sit next to her on the couch she doesn’t seem to mind as much as she would lately, just readjust her legs to draw them closer to herself, and Alex chooses to think it’s because she’s making more room for him to sit, and not because she wants to drive more space between them.

“Oh no, guys, I’m sorry” Jackson blurts out, looking apologetic, glancing at the kitchen table where their laptops and notes are already laid out to start on later tonight, “if you have stuff to do I can go, I just wanted to-”

“Of course not, don’t worry about that” Meredith reassures him. Her voice is soft, maternal, and Alex is constantly amazed at how quickly she can turn into the mom friend when the occasion calls for it. It’s alway been like this, even when they were younger and she used to be such a mess you would have never thought she could help anyone fix their crap. It didn’t really matter if she liked you, or if you were really friends, she’d never turn her back on anyone. Alex remembers her doing it for him, and he finds it comforting that she hasn’t changed much now.

“So, what’s wrong with you?” she asks Jackson, smirking when he squirms at the idea of having to admit out loud whatever it is that’s his problem. He is choosing his words carefully, head bowed to look at Ellis instead of them. He is drawing circles on her stomach, and she doesn’t seem bothered by it at all while she merrily smashes two pieces of legos together.

“We signed the papers today” he says eventually, “I really didn’t know where I wanted to go so I just… came here, for some reason.”

Alex and Meredith share a quick worried look, and simultaneously turn back to him.

“I’m sorry, Jackson” she says quietly.

Alex knew it was coming. They’ve been screaming at each other about it all over the hospital for weeks, and he shared an odd night at Joe’s with Kepner not long ago, where they just played darts and drank beer and she was uncharacteristically quiet and gloomy the whole time. She wiped the floor with him, too, and she didn’t even gloat.

You know, not like Kepner at all.

“Thanks, Mer. It’s just- you know...” he trails off, clearly unsure of what to say, “I know that’s not the point at all, but I keep thinking that there’s no way we’ll ever get back to being the friends we were before, and that’s the thing that I hate the most out of all of this.”

Alex’s words leave his mouth before he can stop them.

“Maybe it’s for the best.”

“You can’t know that.”

What?

He turns fully to look at Meredith, disbelief written all across her face in a way that surely matches his own. They’ve spoken at exactly the same time, but their opinions are so wildly different it would make him laugh if he weren’t so surprised by it.

“What do you mean _you can’t know that_ ” he asks her, “what are they supposed to do, pinky promise they won’t fight ever again and pretend nothing ever happened?”

“Of course not” she retorts, “but maybe it doesn’t have to mean they won’t ever be able to talk to each other again.” She’s staring at him, wide eyed, outraged, turning full to face him better on the couch.

“Guys-”

“I didn’t mean _that_ , but she can’t expect him to-”

“-maybe _she_ is thinking the same thing, and if they both think their friendship is important, then-”

“Guys.”

“The problem isn’t them not thinking the friendship is important, it’s actually being able to go back to how things were before.”

“You know what, why don’t you go ask Jo what she thinks of _staying friends-_ ”

“Guys!” Jackson shouts, and they’re both startled into silence, heads snapping back to look at him. Ellis is still giggling happily into his lap.

Alex takes stock of the situation while he tries to catch his breath: they were yelling, getting increasingly worked up over this absurd argument that doesn’t even concern them. He is baffled at the fact that for some reason they are on different sides of this, when they would usually be so in sync. It is weirding him out a little. 

Meredith is red in the face, lips parted slightly while she pants heavily. She really cares about this for some reason, he thinks, and he makes a point of trying to figure out why.

“Look at that, your mom and dad are fighting like teenagers” he hears Jackson whisper in Ellis’ in a sing-song voice.

“What?” he snaps, and this time Meredith is right behind him, same tone and same force in her voice as him.

“Oh, calm down, I was joking” he shrugs them off, “what is up with you anyway? I should be the one getting inflamed over this.”

There’s an awkward pause where they both don’t know what to say. Meredith has that stubborn look on her face like when she’s been caught in a misstep and doesn’t want to give in and apologize. Eventually she speaks first.

“Don’t mind me, therapy is making me crazier than I was before” she says with a shrug, and it’s such a Meredith thing to say, snappy and self-deprecating and honest, that it cuts through the tension of their little argument, all three of them losing themselves in laugher.

They spend some time of the evening drinking and chatting, Alex and Jackson sitting on the rug opposite each other, encouraging Ellis to walk from one to the other. She recently took her first steps, but she’s still uncertain on her legs and more than a couple attempts end with her falling on her butt.

Eventually the little girl starts rubbing her eyes and yawning, so Meredith picks her up and brings her upstairs to her bed. Alex considers for a second what he should do, before getting up from the couch and making his way upstairs too. Neither of them says a word about it, but he can feel Jackson’s stare on his back while he goes.

He finds Meredith in Ellis’ bedroom, cooing at the girl while she changes her into her pajamas. He leans against the door frame and just watches them for a minute.

“Hey.”

“Hey” she says back, but she’s not meeting his eyes, busies herself with carrying Ellis to her crib to put her down.

“Listen, about earlier…”

“No, Alex, I’m sorry” she says, turning to look at him, finally. “I don’t know why I got so upset about it, it’s not even my business, and you didn’t-”

“Mer” she stops her, takes a step forward into the room, “what is going on with you? You’ve been avoiding me for weeks- don’t say that you haven’t” he points at her when she opens her mouth to argue, “and I need to know what I did wrong.”

“You did nothing wrong” she exhales, and her shoulders drop a little, “I was serious, therapy is messing me up a little and I guess I took it out on you. I’m fine.”

He looks at her, and there’s something she’s still not telling him, but she also looks like she’s telling him the truth, and for now he’ll take it if it means she’ll start confiding in him again.

“Alright, you’re fine. Just- please don’t shut me out again.”

“I won’t” she smiles at him faintly, “I’m sorry.” He reaches up to put his hand on her shoulder, guiding her out of the nursery. “I have to have a word with your therapist, if he’s making you redirect all your crap on me” he jokes, she bursts out in a breathy chuckle and he finally feels a little lighter, feeling the weight of Meredith’s body when she allows herself to lean into his side a little.

Downstair Jackson is flipping the cap off of another beer, and now that he’s not on edge about Meredith being mad at him, Alex can really concentrate on how miserable their friend looks: Jackson has dark circles under his eyes, and his shoulders are slumped, his clothes looking a little wrinkled, a far cry from his usual pristine appearance.

They both take their places back on the couch, and Alex immediately notices that this time Meredith isn’t shying away from him, instead she’s leaning a little against him, her legs folded under her. On instinct, he flings his arm over the back of the couch to make the position more comfortable for both of them, and this too feels right, familiar, like they’ve done it a thousand times (because they have). 

Jackson seems to notice, shooting them a quick look. “So, you two have made up?” he asks them, smirking.

“We have, thank you very much” he feels, more than sees, Meredith pipe up from his side, hears the smile in her voice, as she adjusts herself a little against him. “So don’t you think we’re gonna let you go until you talk it all out first.”

They let him talk, wait patiently when tears threaten to spill and words get caught in his throat, nod along in understanding when he gets passionate and starts ranting angrily, they both try to give some vague advice, sympathizing with him but not wanting to take sides in this fight between two of their friends. 

It gets late, and the conversation shifts toward more neutral topics, stretched between long moments of silence where they all just drink in contemplation. Meredith has progressively gotten more comfortable against Alex’s side, at one point dropping her head to rest on his shoulder. He can feel her pressing heavier on him, and it’s only when Jackson points it out that he understands why.

“She’s out like a light” he says quietly, “She must have been beat.”

Alex simply hums in acknowledgement, craning his head a little to see for himself without moving her too much. She’s fallen asleep against his shoulder, the slight crease on her forehead telling him that’s probably not the most comfortable position she could have been in. Still, she looks peaceful and he feels grateful she’s getting the rest she needs.

“How is she doing after recovery?” Jackson asks. He sees her everyday at work, sure, and sometimes even after, but it makes sense that he would ask Alex, everyone seems to have figured out that he has some skin in the game, one way or another. He’s glad that, at least from Jackson, he’s not getting grief about it.

“Well, you know” he considers his words carefully, “you saw how she can get, I’m still not sure what’s going on there. But she seems fine, she’s gonna be fine. She’s been through worse.”

“Yeah, you’ve been through worse” Jackson whispers, seemingly lost in thought.

The change in pronouns catches him by surprise, and for a second he fears Meredith has woken up, and that his friend was addressing her. But she’s still dead to the world, and he shoots him a questioning look, urging him to elaborate.

“Do you remember when we had just got here from Mercy West, and Mer was in the hospital? She had donated something, right? Her...” he trails off, realizing he never knew the details of that.

“...her liver, to her dad” Alex helps him out, a little confused at the direction this seems to be taking.

“Right, her liver. Well, we had been in the program not more than a week, and I didn’t really know anybody. I barely knew your names and that was it. One night I was typing up dictations and the recovery floor is really quiet, so I was sitting at the nurses’ desk there. Mer and Yang were in bed together, talking so loudly everyone down the hall could hear them, and then you walked in.”

He stops talking for a second and looks at him. Alex knows what time he’s referring to, it’s burned in his memories so deeply he doesn’t think it will ever fade out. Jackson looks like he wants some sort of confirmation to continue.

“That’s the day Izzie left me.”

“I-yes, I figured. I mean, I couldn’t hear what you said, but I pieced it together afterward. Yang tried to hug you, but you wouldn’t let her, and Mer almost tore her stitches trying to get up to do it herself.”

Alex chuckles darkly at that, but he’s still missing the point of having to revisit one of the worst days of his life.

“I was watching you three, and I didn’t even know you, and I remember thinking there was really no space for me in a place where people were so freakishly committed to each other. The woman had been their friend up until that morning, and they both looked like they were ready to go to war for you, open transplant wound and all.”

“We’d go to war for you too now, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s not the same. You already had that, I just came after.” He takes another sip of beer, “April and I had that together, I guess, and now that’s gone too.”

“If it’s really as deep as you think it is, it’s not gonna go away just because you guys split up.”

Jackson gives him a look, a single eyebrow raised. “You know that this is what Mer was talking about before, right?”

Alex does another double take at that, at a loss for what the other man’s saying. He’s endlessly confused at the million directions this conversation seems to be taking, and he narrows his eyes cautiously. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, she is worried things are gonna happen for you two and you won’t be there anymore when they fall apart.”

“I’ll always be here, why would she think that?” _That makes absolutely no sense_ , Alex thinks, because if his past has taught him anything, it’s that there’s very little Meredith could do to him, or he could do to her, that will make it so that they wouldn’t want to be in each other’s lives anymore. Before he can open his mouth to argue, another detail grabs his attention. “And I’m sorry, but what things?

“Alex…” Jackson starts to say with a huff, like he’s about to explain something he thinks Alex should already have figured out on his own, when Meredith stirs by his side and pushes herself into a sitting position.

“Why didn’t you two assholes wake me up?” she whines, hair matted where she was laying on his shoulder and the imprint of the seam of his shirt on her cheek.

“You looked too cute to wake up” he jokes, and there it is again, that look he can’t quite place that’s appearing on her face more and more lately. “You looked just like Ellis when she falls asleep, it was sweet” he finishes, and just like that the look is gone, replaced by a tight smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

He thinks he can hear Jackson muttering _idiots_ into the neck of his beer, but maybe he just imagines it.

*

He spends the entire day arguing against it, but eventually Alex talks Meredith into going out with the hot Army doctor anyway, not that he would ever admit it to Maggie. 

He knows what to say to her, he knows what her fears and hang-ups are, and he lets her sit on her doubts all day before he corners her in the OR. There, in the quiet room where it’s always easier to let yourself think, he tells her what she needed to hear to decide all on her own.

He didn’t need to coax her into it, like Pierce was trying to do, or bully her into making a choice: Alex knows that the best way for Meredith to make up her mind is to _give her time_ to make up her mind, and he listens as she circles back around all her issues before he actually gives her the final nudge she needs.

She is not cheating on Derek if she goes on one date.

If the date ends up sucking, or even if it _doesn’t_ , she’ll be ok.

Later, in the lobby, he can see the exact second when she decides that she’s gonna go for it. He watches her make her way up to the guy ( _not bad, Mer,_ he thinks) and finally confront him.

Her shoulders are squared, and there’s determination in her eyes, and it makes Alex smile that she’s facing this like she does everything else, jumping head first carelessly, and to hell with the consequences.

He plugs the tablet into its charging station and goes to find Jo.

*

_He’s gonna kill him._

He is rushing through traffic, and he tries to tell himself that this is not like the last time, this is not a 911 page where he gets there and she’s bloody and unconscious on a table. 

It was just Maggie, telling him something happened with the Army guy and now she was acting weird. So, rationally, he knows that she’s fine, but he part of his brain that is wired for tragedy keeps telling him the worst thing happened and he just doesn’t know yet.

He gets to the house and barely parks his car before running for the door, stumbling through it, breathless.

“Where is he? I’ll kill him” he announces, and three pairs of eyes look up at him, curiously, from their place on the foyer’s carpet. Meredith looks fine, unharmed, but his brain still is trying to play catch up. “Did he hurt you? Are you hurt?” 

She just stares at him, unimpressed, like she wants to tell him he’s an idiot who always gets things wrong. “Go fill this with water” she says, handing him a plastic pitcher thingy.

_...What?_

It takes another couple of minutes before he can piece everything together. Maggie was just being her usual worried self, and Amelia is having way too much fun watching an unhinged Meredith run around the house to actually do something about. Great.

When did he become the only rational one of their little group.

This is how he ends up spending his day, munching on cereal straight out of the box just to get yelled at by Meredith for leaving crumbs where she just vacuumed. He listens to Amelia complain about Hunt (and says nothing of it, because everything about it sounds too complicated, and he’s not going to get in the middle of that), and Maggie spiral about DeLuca (which sounds _not at all_ complicated, he’s just dumping her and she doesn’t know yet), until.

Until Meredith stops in her tracks, shoulder slumping as she’s standing in front of the open linen closet upstairs.

“It’s his stupid, stupid blanket” she says, eyes glossy with tears, but she’s smiling, finally at peace. “We’re done cleaning.”

The way she’s finally calmed down puts him more at ease than anything else. He doesn’t even make too much fun of her for the fire she makes in the living room, and he says nothing as she tells him about the blanket. Even after spending the day with her, somehow, when the doorbell rings and it’s Thorpe on the other side, _I’m gonna kill him_ surges forward in his mind again and he has to hold onto the door frame while he talks to the guy, or he’s gonna do something really stupid.

Meredith squeezes his arm, reassuringly, before closing the door behind her and the guy, and Alex tries to shake off the sudden, irrational urges he’s resigned himself to feel whenever Meredith’s concerned. Maggie and Amelia are studying him from the kitchen, and he does his best to school his features into something more collected than what’s going on in his head.

“You guys want pizza?”

*

Today, word around the hospital is that Amelia and Hunt are getting married. Alex has a good laugh at that, because he finds it mostly stupid (but also kind of sweet), before putting it out of his mind and going back to his day as usual. Until Meredith finds him.

He doesn’t want for her evident bad mood to rub off on him, but then she starts ranting a mile a minute about all the reasons this wedding is gonna be a pain in her butt, and against his better judgement, the more she talks about it the more he starts to get into his own head.

“Promise me you won't do this” she suddenly addresses him, after having talked mostly to herself until now. He tries to shake off the weird feeling he got.

“What?”

“If Jo ever pulls that ring out of that drawer, just go to Vegas, elope or something. Don't put us through it all.”

He is this close to telling her that he doesn’t think there’s much chance of that ever happening, but the scans for their patient pop up on the screen, and it’s worse than they thought, and what he had to say doesn’t really matter anymore.

*

The kid ends up being fine, almost exclusively thanks to Meredith’s aggressive approach. They update his mother, and they duck out of the room the second she starts making out with her boyfriend. He rolls his eyes at the inappropriateness of it all, and joins Meredith down the hallway, bumping her shoulder with his when he catches up to her.

“See? Happy endings they happen” he tells her, because she’s been pissed all day and he hopes to fix it.

“Oh, please. Everyone's in love in a foxhole.”

“What?”

“He saved her kid” she remind him, “that's like post-traumatic stress romance.”

“You know what? Give it a rest” he warns her, suddenly annoyed. He’s had it with her negativity today, about Amelia and Hunt, about the perfectly normal couple that they just left behind, about his own relationship. She’s making him feel like he shouldn’t care about his own messed up situation, just because it could be worse, and for some reason today her remarks just hit a little different. “Just because you choose to be unhappy doesn't mean everybody else has to.”

“Not true” she says, in a condescending sing-song voice, “not always a choice.”

“You have chances, you know?” He steps in front of her, pulls a hand out to try and stop her. She wants to get past him but he keeps blocking her, and she’s not gonna leave until he’s done saying his peace. “You're hot, you're smart, you're funny. Maybe Thorpe didn't work out, but that doesn't mean you have to stop trying. And it sure as hell doesn't mean you get to crap on everyone else.”

She gives him a fiery look, like she’s about to counter it with something. But instead she just huffs and turns around, disappearing down the hallway. 

“And, yeah” he yells after her, “I'm gonna have a big wedding, and you're gonna be there, 'cause you're gonna be my best man! Deal with it!

If he actually manages to ever get married.

*

There’s smoke and the smell of burnt oil welcoming him home when he opens the door. Jo has been trying to cook for him, even when they both know she royally sucks at it. There’s an unexpected wave of affection cursing through him at seeing her like this, tense and frazzled but so at home in the space, like she was always meant to be there. That, combined with the fact that he spent the day only hearing about Hunt and Amelia’s upcoming wedding, builds up something in him and his brain forms his next sentence before he’s even aware he’s speaking it.

“Jo, I'm ready.”

She doesn’t seem to understand as she keeps fretting over the burnt pan.

“No” he corrects her, “I'm ready to get married. I have proposed to you twice, and you still haven't given me an answer. I bought you a ring. You told me not to get rid of it, so it's just sitting in a drawer, collecting dust.”

He realised, somewhere between Meredith begging for him to just elope, and coming home, that this isn’t about making the big gesture, because he’s already done that. He already put things in motion a long time ago, and it feels a little too late now for him to consider not rushing into things.

The boulder is rolling, he needs to move forward, and he still doesn’t get why Jo is trying so hard to stop it.

“I know” she says, again, for the millionth time, and that gets him madder than if she’d had just told him _I don’t want to marry you._

“No, I'm ready to be married, and I need to know when you will be ready. It doesn't have to be today or tomorrow, but I need to know it's gonna happen. I need to know that you're up for this, because I am.” He tries not to yell, but he’s getting increasingly worked up as he talks, and he knows his last words are coming out just plain angry. He tries to take a breath to steady himself, but he’s not sure it even works. “Look, I'm not scared of being committed to you. I want to be married to you. But I'm done waiting. So I just need to know, will you marry me?”

It turns out, when he thought that hearing her say _no_ would be better than her keeping on giving half-answers, he was just completely, utterly wrong.

Because she says _no_ , the word definitive, final, and his heart finally breaks for good.

He just pulls the door behind him until it slides shut with a deafening rattling sound.

*

“It's gonna rain.”

“It's not gonna rain” Alex tell tells Meredith, out of sheer need to antagonize her, because of course it’s going to rain, look at the sky, but that doesn’t mean she should get to crap on this day just because she’s mad at her sister.

He had to get her out of the house, because everyone there was being cheery and excited about the wedding, and Meredith was acting like such a downer it was starting to make him a little uncomfortable too. Plus, Kepner in wedding-planner mode would have been too much for him even on a good day, and this is definitely not a good day, so he made up an excuse for him and Meredith to just leave the house for a while, and now they’re laying in the grass, staring up at the gray, heavy sky.

He lets Meredith drone in and rant about the whole thing, the wedding and Amelia and how absurd she thinks it all is, and he listens just enough to know where to interject, but mostly he gets lost into his own head, an entirely different wedding on his mind. His own.

He tries to forget sometimes, tells himself there’s no point in reliving it when he knows how it ended, like when you watch a movie for the second time and you wonder if it’s worth giving it a second chance if you know the final twist already.

He has vague memories of the ceremony itself, but what scares him a little is how strongly he still manages to feel about it all. He was happy, right there in that moment, and maybe if things had ended differently he still would be. What does that say about him? Does he really think that _that_ is the moment everything started going wrong in his life?

He catches Meredith’s last words just in time to answer her last, rambling sentence.

“You can't expect her to be Cristina” he reminds her, and he means it like _Amelia is one of your people too, just different,_ but of course she’s too caught up in her own fierce rant to get the right meaning behind it.

“Exactly my point! She's definitely not Cristina, that's what I mean. Owen wants this? Owen's marrying _this_?”

“He said yes when she asked” he jokes, self deprecating, testing the waters to see if enough time has passed that Jo’s rejection won’t hurt anymore. Apparently, he’s not there yet.

Meredith must have sensed that somehow, turning her head to look at him, calmer now than a moment before. “Jo still hasn't given you a reason?”

“I don't need a reason” he lies, because even if the reason were to be _I don’t love you enough_ at least he’d know. It would hurt like hell, sure, but at least there would be something to hold on to, something to measure her decision against. This way, it feels like he’s just trying to piece together a thing that got broken without knowing what it looked like before. “She doesn't want to marry me. I'm done. It's over. Maybe it's nobody's fault. Maybe you only get one.”

He’s been thinking a lot about that, too. He asks himself whether he is making a big deal out of nothing, because Jo was never his chance at something new, not when second chances are something people just _don’t_ get, and if they do, he’s never been one of those people anyway.

He had his, it turned into crap, that’s just the way his life was supposed to go. Not everyone gets to be happy.

“One what?” she turns to look at him again. “Soul mate? Or true love? Well, then, who-”

He glances at her, eyebrow raised, because he’s sure she’s already figured out the answer, and he has no intention of giving her the satisfaction of saying anything out loud. He already feels stupid and miserable enough

“Izzie?” her eyebrows shoot up too, surprised, and she scoffs at him while she shakes her head, “Alex, Izzie wasn't your one true love. And even if she was-”

“What was Derek? Are you telling me that you think that's coming around again?”

He knows this is a low blow, bringing Derek into it. He’s not sure why he said it, because for all his musings about his past, about Izzie and Jo and whether either of them meant more or less than the other, he is still pretty sure he still hasn’t met the one that would compare to what Meredith and Derek had, not yet. Probably never will.

“That was different” she says, face getting dark, a frown between her eyes.

“How?” he asks, because even if he’s hopeless, there’s a little part of him that needs to know, that part of him that’s still hopeful, as hard as he tries to shut it up.

The rolling sound of thunder covers whatever she was going to say next, and it’s a split second between that and the first drop of rain hitting his cheek.

He hates that she was right, she’ll be insufferable now.

“I told you it was gonna rain. This wedding is doomed.”

*

Meredith didn’t bat an eye when he asked to basically move back into the house on zero notice, but this was so much easier when they were residents and Alex could just steal one of Avery’s shirts from the drier if he needed something, but now he’s the only man in the house, and at some point he has to go back to the loft to get the last of his clothes.

Jo’s pacing back and forth, waiting for him, and he really makes a point out of pretending she’s not here. Not looking at her, not speaking to her, acknowledging her presence, nothing. Thunder rumbles outside the window.

“Let's make a baby.”

He freezes, his hand gripping the edge of the closet door. 

_Is she being serious right now?_

“What?” he can’t help but ask, breaking his resolve. He is looking at her, speaking to her, acknowledging the fact that she said something that might as well change everything that happened in the past two weeks, if he let it.

“You said that you wanted a baby” she explains, nervous, but eager for the chance to finally get through to him. She’s been calling, and texting, and he hasn’t been answering. “And you would make an amazing dad. And that's what you're worried about, right? That I'm not all in? But I am, and I love you.”

That snaps him out of his stupor, cuts through the fog like a knife. _She loves him_ , the words lighting up his brain like firework. But it’s a dull kind of excitement, some sort of automatic reaction, even when the rational part of him has learned by now not to let him trust the feeling. She might love him, but it doesn’t mean anything if there can’t be something more, he knows that now.

“Are you gonna tell me why you won't marry me?” he asks, almost laughing, because Meredith asked him this morning if she had given him a reason, and he told her he didn’t need one, but here he is asking anyway because, really, there is nothing else left to do, so he might as well just ask.

“I told you that I love you and that I'm not going anywhere, isn't that enough? Can't that be enough for you?”

 _It’s not._

It’s not, and he can’t explain to her again why that is. He told her already, more than once, and every time they have this argument he feels less and less heard by her, less and less understood.

“You know, I was with Mer this morning, and I was thinking, the two of us, we've been through hell. You know, all kinds of drama, crazy family stuff, we both almost died, losing people we love-”

He sees Jo recoil at that for a moment, and he almost feels bad for dragging Meredith into it. Some part of him probably did it because he knew how much it would hurt Jo, who’s always been so insecure about his friendship with Meredith, who always thought there was something more behind the surface, always thinking he was keeping something from her. 

“No, y-you're not losing me-”

“...the point is, we grew up. Mer and I are grown up. We got through it. And hell is behind me. It's in my rearview mirror, and I'm not going back. I'm done.”

He realizes, in that moment, that mentioning Meredith wasn’t really about hurting Jo. It was an automatic reaction, like she had been already on his mind and she just popped up into the conversation. He genuinely believes everything he says, but he’s not sure he’s ever spoken any of it out loud, and it’s a little unsettling and strange that _this_ is the time is brain chose to blurt all of it out. _Why now?_

He keeps moving through the loft collecting his things, Jo close on his heels, still trying to get through to him. He blocks her out again and pretends she’s not there, like he’d originally planned. He’s doing pretty well with that, until he forcefully opens a drawer and he sees it.

The ring box.

The memories flood back in, of when he was sitting on Meredith’s old deck and he saw it for the first time, the brightness of the screen blinding him a little; of when he showed it to Jo when he proposed, all his hopes and excitement getting crushed when she got angry at him instead.

The exhaustion from a second ago transforms into white hot rage.

“I'm not- I'm not some idiot kid anymore, Jo. I'm a man, and I'm done with games. I'm done with with crazy, I'm done with losing, I don't care about your secrets and your excuses and your drama. You know, I-I've had that.”

“Alex, if we could just-” she tries to interrupt him, takes a step forward like she wants to touch him. He recoils at that, like her hands could burn him, and now he’s just _shouting._

“I just said I don't want to do this! I I have never had one second of anything real my entire life. I want truth! I want I want a wife and a house and a family! Amelia and, uh- Owen's wedding today, I want that!

He doesn’t listen to what she has to say after that, and just leaves. Again.

He is so tired of always having to leave like that, but this feels different, like if for the first time he’s completely sure he has no desire to ever come back.

*

Meredith was right, this wedding is doomed.

Surprisingly, Hunt has yet to start freaking out, and from the looks of it, it really seems like he won’t at all, which is surprising considering the hospital’s track record for weddings. They never go the way you plan.

Alex knows what is going on, Meredith called him earlier to at least have _someone_ know what was going on. He could hear the faint bickering of the sisters in the background, and he made some snarky remark about runaway brides and the fact that Kepner couldn’t even yell at them for it before hanging up. He hasn’t told Hunt about any on that, in case he decides to do something stupid about it.

So Alex sits there, eating peanuts and mostly minding his own business, still sulking over his encounter with Jo. When Webber asks Hunt what he wants to do, Alex wants to laugh at him and his naivete, before something in him clicks.

“If you get to the point when you’re ready to go down the aisle with someone, she’s earned some trust. And faith. She’s earned the benefit of the doubt.”

Maybe it’s the food, maybe it’s the wedding atmosphere, or the earnest look on Hunt’s face that really makes it look like he means it, but the words hit Alex like a gut punch, and for a second he feels like he can’t breathe.

 _Has he been too rushed in dismissing Jo?_

_No, stop it_ , he wants to tell himself, he knows he’s done more, waited more than it was probably wise for anyone to do, but still. There’s a nagging feeling somewhere in his mind telling him he should be willing to try one more time. He pushes it down, blames his weakness on the alcohol, and puts down his beer for good measure. He’s not getting sucked into it again.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and it’s the last in a long thread of texts from Meredith. This one is weird, though. It’s not just logistics on their whereabouts, but a single line ending with a question mark.

_do you really think we only get one chance at love?_

If he was looking for a sign, it would damn well be it, right?

*

Of course, he eventually remembers he never believed much in signs.

There’s screaming, and punching, until he forgets the reason why he thought he could change his mind.

The reason why he thought he could be happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am sorryyyy this took longer to update, but i got stuck on a scene i couldn't figure out if i wanted to add or not (spoiler alert, i didn't. but if you're curious you can ask me about it here or on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com))
> 
> also sorry about that ending. that was rough even for me to write.
> 
> leave a comment if you'd like!


	5. try to come home early, okay?

When Alex was a resident, he did the worst thing he’d ever done in his life. 

It was his fourth year of residency, and he really felt like his life was falling apart: he got dumped, scammed out of a job by the same girl, and he felt directionless and worthless in his career enough that he started pushing everyone away. The Alex from now could tell younger-Alex that he was being an idiot, that if he looked back no further than three months prior he’d see that the Africa project was one of the most successful and kickass things the hospital had ever worked on, and he was the one that made it happen.

But the Alex from now wasn’t there, so when younger-Alex saw Meredith killing the game on Shepherd’s Alzheimer’s trial, he got jealous of her being more accomplished than him.

So, he went ahead and ruined her entire life.

Meredith bounced back from it, because she always does, but from a safe distance (far away from where Cristina Yang was at all times) Alex saw how much it tore at her to do it. She punished herself and gave up her work, jumped when Shepherd said _jump_ for months before they could stand each other again, cried when she wasn’t sure she’ll ever see her daughter again.

They never talk about that time, ever.

Because Alex loves Zola now, would pick her before her siblings any day (even if he knows you’re not supposed to have favorites). She likes to go running with him and challenge him on who can do the most abs reps. She is smart, and witty, and she shares his same exact sense of humor, which drives Pierce crazy because an eight year old _should not say stuff like that._

He loves her, a love so real and visceral it scares him when he stops to think about what the implications of it might mean. He can’t bring himself to think of what his life would be if his younger self hadn’t also fixed the monumental mistake he made.

So, there you go. Up until now, that was the absolute worst thing he’d ever done in his life.

Up until now.

He has resigned himself to the idea of spending the night in jail, when a guard coming in catches his attention. He looks up, and Meredith is standing right on the other side of the bars of his cell.

It feels surreal, the idea of this being _his_ cell.

She’s looking at him the same way she looks at her kids when they make a mess, and as angry and disappointed as she is, she’s trying not to let it show because they already feel bad enough without her yelling at them. Sounds about right.

“It was nice knowing you” he tells her, peering through the bars at her.

“Shut up” her voice is small and defeated. She sounds different than when they were at the hospital, where she was fiery and strong and _angry_.

“What? You think I'm keeping my job or my medical license?” disbelief in his voice because he knows she’s not, _she can’t be_ this stupid. He’s never going back to being a doctor again, it has taken him a couple of hours to make his peace with it, but he’s not sure he has the energy to convince Meredith too right now.

“We don't know what's going to happen” she says with a little more conviction. Just like that, she’s back to her usual supportive Meredith, the one who has always a plan ready no matter how bad the situation is. 

It surprises him, because earlier tonight she had been so mad at him that for a second he really feared this was the time that did it, the time she was going to leave him alone to deal with all his crap. Meredith has never been the kind of person to sugarcoat things, but hearing her say _he should press charges, we are the bad guys here_ had been a slap in the face more than anything else that has happened in the last couple days.

Alex knows he’s the bad guy, he’s not going to pretend like he isn’t, but for some reason he had kind of expected Meredith to deny the clear truth for as long as she could. It wouldn’t have been very pretty, but it would have been very Meredith, in a way. Despite everything else, he finds it in himself to be a little proud of her for not hiding either.

“I'll tell you what isn't gonna happen: me ever setting foot in that hospital again.”

She looks down, away from him, sighs heavily. “Sorry” she says. She looks back up then, stares at him while she props herself on the bars. She looks completely open, sure on her feet, ready for whatever he’ll need her for. She looks strong, the calm before the storm.

Something from deep within him screams at his body to reach out and hug her. It’s the exhaustion, he figures, and the adrenaline wearing off and leaving him feeling boneless and hazy, but he has this thought of what it would feel like if he ran his fingers through her hair. She would tilt her head to lean on his hand, he thinks, and close her eyes, and he could draw her into him until they were hugging. He could finally be holding onto something he knows it’s never going away, something he knows will keep him rooted to the ground whatever happens.

“Why? You didn't punch the guy.”

“But I told Bailey” she says, steady, even while there’s just a hint of guilt in her voice.

He snaps his head up to stare at her and she’s still looking at him, still not budging, and if he was proud of her before, his heart is about to burst now. Intern-Meredith would not have ratted one of her people out to the Chief. Hell, intern-Meredith _did not_ rat one of her people out to the Chief the last time they all did something really stupid, and she almost lost her job because of it. 

He did a terrible thing, and he’s glad he’ll have her to back him up, but he’s so much more glad he won’t have to worry about her getting herself into trouble because of him. 

“You did?”

“Yes, I had to.” There is no hesitation in her voice, or in the way her eyes are lit up with certainty, and determination has always been the best look on her.

God, he could kiss her right now.

Wait.

_What?_

“You did the right thing” he says, pushing that last thought so further back into his mind that he thinks he might have pulled a muscle. “Right now, being the guy who got beat up would feel better.”

“You said it yourself” she tells him, and he can’t quite look at her while she speaks, “we're grown-ups. We can't run, we have to face up to the stupid things we do. Supposedly, if you face up to them, something good comes out of it. I don't know what, but-”

“Fifteen to twenty, probably” he cuts her off, because what she’s saying is getting too much, and he needs to put some distance between the consequences of his actions and his present, just for a while. 

She smiles, barely, because she recognizes this is just his idea of self-deprecating humor, but maybe she’s more worried than she’s letting on, and jokes aren’t really what she’s looking for right now. She sighs. “I'm sorry.”

“Shut up.”

There’s a long moment of silence stretching over them, and he relaxes a little against the bars, Meredith on the other side but close enough that he can feel some sense of normalcy in this very not-normal situation. The simple fact that she’s there, just for a while, is curing him of the panic and anxiety he didn’t really realize he was feeling.

“I paid bail, let’s go home” she says eventually, and from the corner of one eye he sees the guard stepping forward, the jingle of the keys on the keyring echoing across the room.

“Couldn’t you have said this before? We could have had this conversation in the car” he protests, and she shoots him another of her mom-glares, the one that says _you should be thankful this is all the punishment you’re getting, don’t test me._

“I thought it would do you some good, Mr Iowa State wrestler” she quips, “if it’s not enough, I could ask for my money back and you could stay a little longer.”

“Shut up, you’d be lost without me” he bumps his shoulder against hers, and he almost slings his arm across her back before feeling very self-conscious about it, for some reason, letting his arm fall to his side and burying his hands deep in his pockets. 

“So” he says instead, as they walk out of the station together, “what happened to Shepherd and Hunt’s wedding?”

*

He is now the kind of guy who has to dress up for court hearings instead of getting ready for work in the morning.

For all the complaining she does about Pierce being a hoverer and always being in her way, Meredith is sure being especially _present_ lately. She fusses over him, stands around when he’s making food in the kitchen, lingers by the door of his room while he’s getting ready for bed, chatting nervously about nothing just to not leave him alone.

It’s not that he really minds, in a way it’s nice to have some sort of background noise constantly in his head, to distract him from what is actually going on, from the dark paths his mind takes him into sometimes.

Meredith goes with him to court for his hearing, and of course it goes worse than they expected, because that is just his luck. They argue in the car all the way to the hospital, her endless optimism starting to grate at him a little bit, because he knows she’s faking it, and that annoys him more than anything else. When they get to the hospital, he finds out that one of his favorite patients has to be admitted again, and he blows it so badly on his new treatment plan that Bailey takes Alex off the case before he even has a chance to make it right.

Where Meredith has been all quiet, constant care, Bailey is loud and curt, listing off all the reasons she’s disappointed in him. It somehow reminds him of the set of rules she had, the ones she used to recite to interns on their first day: _I am Miranda Bailey, and I have five rules._

Now it’s _I am Miranda Bailey, and I have at least five reasons why I should fire you right now._

She doesn’t, in the end, for some reason he still doesn’t get but is not going to dispute. She sits him down in her office and, as calmly as she can muster, announces he’ll work at the clinic for the time being. He can tell that she’s expecting him to throw a fit because of it, tell her he’s not gonna work in the stupid Duquette clinic, but he takes the job as gracefully as he can, just thanks her and leaves before his body has the chance to do something stupid, like throw a penholder or something.

Meredith is waiting for him in the parking lot, and at least there’s a silver lining to his new job, something to be excited about: in one of her mopey, self-commiserating moments she confessed that she was dreading the moment she would have to drive to the hospital with just her sisters in the morning, without him as a buffer. The whole idea had been stupid, because, historically, he has never been a buffer between her and her sisters, but he had appreciated the sentiment behind it. _It won’t be work if you’re not there too._

They get home is relative silence, and after dropping their keys and jackets they go through the usual routine together, used to it after years of on and off cohabiting. It’s been only a couple weeks, but it was all it took for old habits to come back to the surface.

Meredith goes upstairs and checks on the kids, who are probably already asleep, while he throws together some food and pulls beer out of the fridge. The day that seemed neverending has actually ended, and he can finally bury himself in the corner of Meredith’s couch, dreaming of nothing more than a perfectly quiet, uneventful night. She comes back downstairs and plops on the other end of the couch with a loud sigh. She is pissed at Bailey, he can tell, and he’s suspended between being thankful to her for it, for being the only one he can constantly count on to defend him, and having to tell her that it’s fine, really, it’s the least that he deserves, Bailey is not the bad guy here.

There’s a tiny moment of silence and the air around them shifts, and he has felt it enough over the years that he knows he should expect some sort of dramatic revelation right about...

“I slept with Riggs.”

...now.

His first reaction is to roll his eyes at how predictable she is, dropping a bomb like this at the exact time he expected her to. Then, his brain actually registers what she has told him, and his mind goes blank with how _massive_ the new information is.

In his state of shock, he doesn’t fully acknowledge the tiny pang of something that flashes deep into his chest, like something knocking at his sternum from the inside.

“Okay” he says when he finds his voice, non-committal, cautious.

“In the parking lot. In my car” She sounds ashamed, and also _not_ at the same time, and maybe that’s the thing that finally breaks him.

“In the car you drove me home in?” he laughs, because out of the entire situation this is what his brain chooses to focus on. The car he was just in, that she used to pick him up and bring him home. The car she was apparently naked in, with some guy. He wants to know more, wants to know when and how and _why_ , but Maggie comes in bursting through the door, talking a mile a minute, she hijacks the tequila when she drops between them on the couch, and all of a sudden Meredith’s confession becomes ten times funnier.

Meredith is looking at him from the other side of an oblivious Maggie, and her face is so desperate that he knows in that moment this is not something he can ever use to make fun of her with. This must have meant something, and the realization makes him suddenly grow somber.

The tiny pang of something is still sitting there.

*

Two months go by and Alex hates that this life is starting to feel normal now: opening the clinic in the morning, working all day, closing at night. Meredith has stopped hovering, for the most part. She tries to leave the house with him in the morning to drop him off at the clinic, has stopped coming in to have lunch together in secret, keeps him up late at night talking his ear off about whatever.

Bailey is more difficult, she watches him like a hawk and every time it seems like she’s a little angrier at him. She still goes on lengthy speeches about how stupid he’s been, how she should fire him, how she’s always thought he could become so much better than this. Every speech ends with a little dip in her anger, a short moment where she looks at him with soft eyes and asks him how he’s doing, caring and maternal and everything Bailey is capable to be. That’s usually the moment he stands up and leaves, unable to take the hopefulness, the offering of help in her eyes and words. He knows he doesn’t deserve it, and he is not going to drag Bailey down with him.

He barely sees Jo, however. She must have chained herself to some lab project or something, because she’s not on the surgical floor when he sneaks in up there to steal supplies for the clinic, or in the cafeteria when he meets Meredith and the sisters for lunch. He never sees her, and he would think it was just coincidence, except for the one time he caught a glimpse of her and she ran so fast in the other direction that she almost knocked over a crash cart.

So, that solves that.

*

The best part of being a doctor is that sometimes you don’t even need to be in a hospital to help people. Sometimes, you are standing in line at the courthouse and you see something that doesn’t sit right with you, and you actually get to make a difference in that person’s life.

The worst part of being a doctor is that sometimes that difference you make is having to tell them they’re going to die in three months.

It sucks even worse when you sort of like them.

Veronica seems cool, funny, and Alex genuinely laughs at most of her jokes while he checks her out back at the clinic, his hands coming up to feel her glands as she goes on and on about this guy that knocked her up. It’s a strange feeling, getting caught between the hilarity of her personality and the sinking realization that something is definitely wrong with her.

He has to fight every single step of the way to get Veronica the help she needs. He yells at Bailey in front of Webber, something he wouldn’t have thought in a million years was even _possible_ , and then has to spend the day running back and forth with Jo, of all people, between the hospital and the clinic, picking up labs and making the surgical plan, then he yells at Bailey _again_ , but eventually he convinces her to give the surgery a shot.

He gets a thrill out of it, thinking about surgery and laying out the plan and thinking of every detail. When it comes to the moment of actually having to cut and he gets sent back downstairs, he expects to feel a lot crappier, but for some reason he is just glad he got to do this for a patient.

The guy, the baby daddy, Veronica’s friend, is sitting by her bed with a lost look on his face. He is kind of dorky, with an ugly 90’s sweater and thick glasses and for a second he reminds him of O’Malley, for some reason.

Alex rarely lets himself think about George O’Malley, half out of residual guilt for how he used to treat him, half out of grief and sadness. Jeremy seems like the kind of guy that lets his friends drag him along into things, always too nervous to fight them on it. The kind of guy who rarely speaks up, lets others make the decisions and then happily rolls with it. He seems quiet, and full of nervous energy, and like he deeply cares about this girl. 

Jeremy loses it on him about something stupid, Veronica’s hoodie and the baby having to wear similar tiny hoodies and the only thing Alex can do is sit him down and listen until he wears himself out. 

He gets it. He still hasn’t fully shaken off the sickening feelings of waiting for Meredith to wake up and not being able to do anything about any of it, the slight panic at the idea of having to take care of things for her now, even a full year later. He smiles faintly when Jeremy tells him that Veronica is the one that’s in charge of common sense, because after spending the day with them he would never have thought that ugly-sweater-wearing, nerdy glasses guy would be the fun friend and fiery, talk-a-mile-a-minute girl would be the responsible one.

Then again, no one would believe that Department Head Meredith Grey is the kind of chaotic parent that sometimes puts leftover pizza in her kids’ lunchboxes, and soon-to-be-felon Alex Karev is the one that goes back after she’s packed them and puts carrot and celery sticks in there too.

It occurs to him in that moment how many times he thought about Meredith today, and he tries to ignore the little creature he can still feel curl up in his chest every time he does.

*

He knocks on Meredith’s bedroom door, smiles when she looks up from her book and sees him. He knows she’s probably pissed at him, this was supposed to be a big day and he was supposed to call her, but didn’t. Work got in the way. For the first time in months, work got in the way, and it felt nice.

Besides, he has half a suspicion that if he had called her, he would have ended up spending more time thinking about her than he already did, and wouldn’t have gotten anything done. He drops into her bed, laying still on one side of it.

“You didn't call, you didn't text” she predictably starts to lecture him, “you definitely didn't come home early.”

He wants to tell her about Veronica, but the thought of reliving the day somehow feels like too much right now, so he gives her the shortest, most non-committal answer he can think of hoping it’s enough for her. Same goes for court, and he knows she’s probably spent the day sitting at home, worrying herself sick over it, over _him_. It’s not like he doesn’t want to talk about it, he truly has nothing to talk about. It happened, it went how it was supposed to go, they’ll have to wait and see. His life will change, he already knows that, the only thing that’s different is that now he has an exact date of when that will happen.

He thinks about Jeremy again, about the fact that he too has a date marked up on his calendar of when his life will change forever, his kid’s life will change forever. When something bad happens to you, you’re not the only one whose life changes.

“I want waffle Sundays” he says, out of the blue, and Meredith looks at him with a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Am I supposed to know what that means?” she smirks, and he can tell that she thinks he’s kidding but she’s willing to go along with it for his sake. He tries to be as serious as he can, needs to let her know this is not a joke.

“Well, every Sunday, I want to do waffles, like a family, all of us. You, me, the kids, Pierce, everybody, all together.” He can almost see it, playing in front of his eyes, like someone is projecting it on the ceiling of her bedroom, the future he wants for himself he didn’t even realize he already has, right now.

“Okay” she’s still smiling, and he’s glad that she seems to be catching on to what he means.

“I want to do that as long as we can before, you know, I go away.” Her face falls, frowning, and he hates himself for having to remind her of the things that cause her pain and stress, because those are almost always completely his fault, lately. He wished he had thought of this when their future wasn’t so uncertain, that way they could have enjoyed the experience without it feeling tainted. “It's important to me.”

“Okay.”

“And Amelia” he says after a brief thought, “she should come, too.”

Meredith sighs heavily at that, rolls her eyes, and he turns his head against the pillow just enough to look at her and shoot her a warning glare. “You need to be nicer to her. You need your sisters. I'm not gonna always be around” he tells her, and he knows she’s recoiling on the inside at the idea, but he also knows he doesn’t have to sugarcoat things for her, not even the things that scare her. “You're gonna need them.”

“She talks so much” she protests weakly.

He wants to laugh at that, because she is one of the most talkative, ramble-y people he knows, and she’s picking that as a character flaw? “So let her, okay?” he says, and looks at her again, and he can see all her resistance still there on her face, “Okay?”

“Okay” she finally gives in. “Do I have to help make the waffles?”

He’s not even surprised at the tone in her voice, because he’s sure nothing would terrify her more that having to cook.

“That's my thing. Stay out of the kitchen.”

*

He doesn’t miss the times where everyone thought he was a jerk and he was constantly angry at the world. That was a lonely life, but at least when he was a jerk no one expected him to give up his bed when people showed up late at night asking for a place to stay. 

He argues with Amelia on the threshold, tells her to suck it up and go back home, and he can feel Meredith watching the conversation from behind him, going back and forth between him and her sister trying to catch up to the unusual scene before her. 

“She talks to me now” he offers as his only explanation, and he closes the door behind Amelia, who doesn’t say anything but smiles awkwardly at both of them before retreating upstair, to his room like he told her to. Meredith turns around to look at him, eyes wide and jaw dropped, confused surprise painted all over her face. She wants to know what just happened, and why the hell _he_ is the one that knows and she doesn’t.

“Don’t give me that look” he cuts her off before she even opens her mouth, “go ask her if you want to know, I am not telling you.”

He likes not being considered a jerk anymore, but he’s not as young as he used to be, and when he wakes at three in the morning, couch cushion smushed against his face, it’s with a crick in his neck and a dull pain building up at the base of his spine.

This cannot go on for much longer.

He groans and pulls himself up into a sitting position, the blanket pooling at his waist. The house is quiet, dark, and he can’t recall another time where everything felt so perfectly _still._ During the day, there’s chaos and kids running around, but even at night, even at the most outrageous hours, there can be people coming in and out, called in on traumas or coming back from a shift that ran too long. 

He revels in the quiet, and because the downstairs bathroom is old and can be very loud, he slowly limps all the way upstairs and to the end of the hall. He is careful to close the door before flicking on the lights, and turning them off again before leaving, so that the light doesn’t illuminate the entire hallway. He is a few steps down the hall, going back downstairs, when a voice startles him.

“Alex.”

Not a question, more like calling for him, certain of his identity even in the dark.

He walks the few steps back to Meredith’s door and leans against it. There’s not much light coming into the room from the window, but he can make out her figure, curled up in her bed with the comforter bunched up all the way under her chin. She’s looking at him sideways from her pillow, and there’s a strand of blonde hair that has fallen over her sleepy, bleary eyes. There’s a brief second where all he wants to do is join her, let the warmth from the blankets and her body heat seep through his sore joints.

“Hey” he just says instead.

“Hey. You couldn’t sleep?”

“No, I’m fine, just needed the bathroom. You?”

She doesn’t really give him an answer, just shrugs and looks away, but even through the comforter he can see the tension in her shoulders, and the frown across her forehead. Without thinking too much about it, he crosses the room and sits at the foot of her bed. He extends one arm and reaches for the shape of her calf over the bedding, and he squeezes reassuringly when she doesn’t pull away. It can’t be that bad, then.

“What is it?”

She shrugs again, and when she speaks up her voice is tiny and stubborn, like a kid’s on the verge of throwing a tantrum. “I don’t know.”

“Mer” he warns her with a sigh, and he wants it to come out as calm and understanding, but he knows it sounds more like a scolding.

“You know Amelia’s stuff” she finally spits out. He didn’t think she’d still be thinking about that, it was such a small thing he had already pushed it out of his mind, but apparently it wasn’t the case for her. “You know her stuff and I don’t, and I don’t know how to ask. You said I need her, but I don’t know how I can make it happen if you’re not here. Maggie is not enough.”

_When, not if,_ he wants to correct her, but he takes a look at her and realises it would be like kicking her while she’s already down. She knows the possibility of _when_ is dangling over their heads, he doesn’t need to remind her.

Alex lays on the bed then, scoots closer until he’s mirroring her, curled on his side with his head on the pillow and his cheek resting on his hand. They’ve been doing this for years now, jumping into each other’s beds to talk like it’s something that normal people do. He has long stopped thinking it’s weird or embarrassing, but he’s still keeping some sort of distance every time it happens: he comes into the room, lays on his back as close to the edge as he can, focuses on the ceiling while he listens to her talk. He offers a ear, but never much else, a silent acknowledgment that he is doing this, yes, but he’s not really happy about it. 

But she looks lost tonight, defeated, and it breaks his heart enough that he knows he can’t play the detached game anymore, he’s willing to let his defences fall for a change. His other hand is loosely sitting in the space between them, and he almost hopes that she would untangle herself from the sheets and take it, give him some sign that she wants him here. She doesn’t, but he doesn’t move it anyway.

“You don’t need to be friends with her if you can’t do it” he whispers in the darkness, “you didn’t need to be friends with me to help me, intern year.”

“We didn’t have history holding us back.”

“Less than a month before you tried to deck me in the locker room” he reminds her, and there are tiny lines wrinkling around her eyes when she smiles, amused by the memory.

“It’s not my fault, someone had to show you your place” she jokes.

“So, what, my place was supposed to be under you?” he retorts, and if she catches the unintentional double entendre she pretends not to, but he is flushing hot with embarrassment and kicking himself in shame. Three months ago, he would have said it, and worse, without batting an eye, confident that their relationship was way past the point of getting hot and bothered about what would absolutely classify as flirty remarks.

He doesn’t know why he is so alert to it now, from an objective perspective they are not doing anything they haven’t done a bunch of times before. They are in bed together, separated by sheets and blankets, talking and joking. It is not an abnormal occurrence. But usually there are people awake around them, noises coming from the bathroom or the kids playing down the hall. Usually, someone else would get kicked out of bed, or someone else would join them, there would be witnesses to the total platonic nature of it all.

The fact that they are covered by darkness and silence, that no one knows they are doing this, feels _exciting,_ and even the feeling is confusing. The fact that he didn’t seek her out, or that she didn’t show up to take up space in his bed, but that she called out to him instead, _asked him_ for it this time, is sending his mind spinning in a million different directions.

He just watches her lose herself in another fit of giggles, and watches her quiet down slowly as she gets serious again, the full range of emotions painted on her face.

She looks beautiful.

He says nothing, because the thought, the one that has suddenly formed in his head and is tentatively pushing at the back of his throat, takes him by surprise so much that he feels like he has been slapped by his own mind. It’s unsettling, thinking of Meredith that way, and definitely not something he can admit at loud.

“Maggie will hate me too, you know” she speaks up out of the blue, and he’s thankful for the distraction from the frankly inappropriate thought that were flying through his head a moment ago, “and then being friends with Amelia will be the only option I have left.”

“Maggie? Why?” he clears his throat, because somehow it comes out raspy and strangled.

“I haven’t told her about Riggs.”

_Ha. This thing._

“Have you, huh, _seen_ him again?” he asks, hoping she gets the true meaning of his words without him having to actually spell it out. 

He feels uneasy, both because of the subject, but mostly because talking about this stuff was never a problem with them before, and suddenly he feels like it is. He is not as quick as Meredith at sharing private things about his life, but he’s always been comfortable enough that he felt like he could tell her if he had the need to, and he has never been bothered by her doing the same, even when the conversation got a little raunchier. It was fun and he got to open up in a way that felt safe. So why is this making him feel so out of sorts?

“No, of course I haven’t. And I won’t, ever again.”

“Then tell her.”

“I told her I wasn’t going to lie to her again, and I did.”

“Then don’t tell her.”

“You’re no help at all” she scoffs, and if this was a normal conversation he would just grin at her until she got annoyed at him, but the foreign, uneasy feeling is still lingering in his mind, and he shrugs trying to shake it off.

“You’re shivering” she misinterprets the movement, “get under the covers, you idiot, you’re going to catch a cold.” She is already moving before he can stop her, grabbing the hem of the sheets and pulling at it against his weight until he sits up to let her push down the covers enough that he can snake under them. She grabs a fistful of comforter and she drags it up to her chin, cocooning herself back in the newfound warmth. As she does, he feels a gush of cold air hitting his lower back. Great.

“Don’t hog all the covers” he groans, tugging on the comforter.

“I’m not” she pouts, tugging too, the sudden force of it making him let go, and he’s rewarded with a satisfied, content hum escaping from the back of her throat.

His heart swells at the sound before he can stop himself, and the realization hits him like a ton of bricks.

_What is that about?_

“I’m going to leave if you don’t stop it. When I sleep alone no one steals my blankets” he mumbles, because if he act like his usual grumpy self, maybe Meredith won’t notice the red flush he can feel creep up his face.

“You don’t even have blankets. Amelia has your room, and you are sleeping on the couch. Don’t be stupid, you should just stay here” she tells him like there’s no point in arguing with her, and he can tell she’s already falling asleep, her eyelids fluttering and her voice getting quieter and quieter as she finishes talking.

She’s not wrong, there’s no way he’s going back downstairs now that he’s settled under proper, warm covers. He moves around the bed a bit, trying to find a comfortable position. He tells himself he is not doing it on purpose, but he inches a little closer to Meredith’s side with every movement. Maybe she wouldn’t find it weird, but even in their casual, laid back relationships there are certain lines they never cross. Up until tonight, actually falling asleep in the same bed, on purpose, was one of them.

When he finally settles, on his side facing her and with one arm extended on the mattress between them, he takes one last look at her before closing his eyes, sleep starting to fog up his brain. He is relaxed, warm, all the weird thoughts of the night filed away as brought up by the middle of the night air, tiredness, and concern about the state of his life.

_This feels fine,_ he reassures himself. _This is what normal feels like, you just forgot._

He can feel the bed move under the weight of Meredith shifting in her sleep, and when she stills her arm falls right next to his, their fingertips barely grazing against each other. She doesn’t move her hand away, and a jolt of excitement runs through him before he can stop himself.

_Well, crap._

*

Jo is married.

The confession feels like he’s been hit with a hammer straight to the chest, and Alex goes through what feels like all the stages of grief as she finally tells him the whole truth.

He feels pissed because for a second he misunderstands her, thinks she went and got married after him, before she explains that she has been married the whole time. He feels angry because she didn’t trust him enough to tell him, before she tells him the reason she didn’t. He feels white hot rage bubbling up inside him because men like that shouldn’t walk the earth unpunished, before she tells him she’s gonna run away from the guy again. 

The whole conversation lasts the time of an elevator ride, but somehow it feels longer, time stretching between them and everything is in slow motion, Jo’s words and the way his brain is processing through all of it. In the end, a sense of calm washes over him as he finally realises what he’s supposed to do. He’s been acting like he made his peace with the idea of going to prison, but he can’t lie to himself and say that he hasn’t been scared like hell.

In a way, this makes it all a little easier. He is going anyway, but at least it will count for something. 

Despite having been together for so long, this is the first time he finally _gets_ Jo, the things she did and how she acted, the things she said over the years, especially at the end, finally make sense. He is not sure he fully understands her keeping it a secret from him, it hurts a little, but the closure he gets out of knowing all the crazy crap that happened wasn’t all about him makes Alex feel more at peace than how he’s felt in the past three months, maybe even longer than that. 

This is gonna happen, and in the process he might as well atone for some of his other sins too, right?

*

The hard part isn’t making the decision, the hard part is telling Meredith.

He finds her in the scrub room like she asked him to, and she’s already geared for battle, he can tell. In her eyes there is fear and panic masked as resolve, and Alex knows he won’t be able to convince her this is the right thing to do, he won’t be able to get her on his side. He wouldn’t expect anything else from her, but he hoped nonetheless. As always, but for some reason now more than ever, not being on the same page feels wrong, like it’s not a thing that should happen, ever.

He can’t do this if she doesn’t think it’s the right move, too.

He’s still calm and collected, explains to her again how, why, when. He is grateful she has been by his side in all of this, ready to lie for him and bend the truth to the point of flat-out ignoring it, but they both know that’s just not right anymore. He can’t go the rest of his life getting away with the worst thing he’s ever done, this is about _him_ finally owning up to it. And if in the process he gets to help Jo too, all the better.

Alex knows Meredith won’t get that. She resists every step of the way, fires back at his calm, matter-of-fact tone with fury and stubbornness. If she were someone else, he might expect her to cry, but of course she doesn’t. She just stares at him, eyes hard, mouth drawn in a firm line while she lists all the reasons why he shouldn’t do it.

Alex lets her tear into him, and it strikes him just in that moment how scared she actually is. He knew, rationally, that she has been worrying about him, his future, and little else for the past three months (probably way longer than that, if he’s being honest), but it didn’t occur to him just how _scared_ she must be. For herself, not just for him. She picked herself up time and time again, trauma after trauma, all those people leaving her. No one ever expects her to recover, but she always does, and that’s one of the things he loves most about her, to the point that he almost envies her sometimes.

He understands why this is freaking her out so much this time: the bad thing is _a choice_. He is choosing the bad outcome willingly, and she can’t quite come to terms with that. They are more similar than they could have thought when they first met, but they are not exactly the same: Meredith won’t ever stop fighting, not in front of anything, and he… this is the moment he’s supposed to stop, he thinks.

She is just getting caught in the crossfire of him stopping, and she can’t make sense of it.

“You'll be okay” he tells her, because there is nothing else he can say, not really, that would make her feel better. _You’ll be okay even if we stop fighting._

“Me? This is about you! You think this is noble, what you're doing? It isn't, it's giving up.  
And it's buying into everything you've ever said about yourself, and I won't let you do it” she spits out angry, and there it is, he was right. She doesn’t understand, she doesn’t want to think of him like someone that quits, because if he quits, then they are not the same, and what is she supposed to do with that then?

“Look. You'll be fine” he says again, because he can’t bring himself to tell her that he knows that he’s leaving her too, knows that he’s hurting her, and he never wanted to do any of that. _You’ll be fine even if I’m not here with you._

“You are not going to jail.”

“You'll be just fine” once again, slowly, and he feels himself crack the tiniest smile, because her fighting him every step of the way is weirdly the only thing he needed to know in order to actually do this: if she had broken down crying, he knows he would have never gone through with it. _You’ll be just fine without me._

“Stop making this about me!” she yells, and he knows she’s right, he’s been doing exactly that. Doesn’t feel guilty about it, though. “Stop using me as an excuse to make yourself feel better. Of course I will be fine. I'm always fine. Don't you know that?”

She looks so much like her mother in this moment, he’s pretty sure she wouldn’t appreciate being told so. She is laying it all on the line, doesn’t pretend to be unbothered just to make him feel better, or gutted just to make him pity her. She will be fine, but that doesn’t mean it’s the way she wants things to go. Meredith never lies, never tries to pretends things are rolling off of her, not when it matters. And this matters.

It hits him in this second, while standing in front of her in the quiet scrub room, her nostrils flaring and fire in her eyes, that he will miss her more than anyone or anything else in his life. A wave of affection washes over him, and he can’t stop himself.

“I'd hug you goodbye, but I'm not scrubbed.”

She wants to keep fighting him, but they get interrupted and this is the moment he decides to make his exit, because he feels like that if he keeps letting her talk, she’s going to convince him to stay, and then it will be even harder to face the inevitable.

He almost wants to tell her, that this isn’t a choice, this is simply speeding up the certainty of his future. Maybe it would make her feel better.

He leaves, and he hates that the last time he sees her she is mad at him, and tries not to wince at the desperation in her voice when she calls after him as he walks down the hallway.

If he turns back now, he knows he’s not going to be able to actually leave her.

*

It’ll be years before he actually understands how or why it happened.

But DeLuca shows up, and he lies through his teeth horribly, gets him off the hook, and he’s out the door before Alex can actually process any of it.

He is not going to jail, and he has no idea why.

In a haze, he gets on a cab and pulls up Meredith’s voicemail, again, as he gives the driver his address. 

Her address? Their address? His address. _Whatever._

No one there to greet him. As far as everyone is concerned, this wasn’t supposed to be an eventful day, the only person that knew he was going to do something stupid (now that the adrenaline has worn off he can see it now, how stupid he was) was Meredith, and as far as she knows, he’s not supposed to be at home right now.

Alex walks upstairs, takes a shower, fishes some old sleeping clothes out of the mountain of his stuff Amelia pushed aside when she _didn’t actually move back in_ , and like on autopilot he finds himself into Meredith’s room. He has slept here so many nights in the past month that he doesn’t even question the subconscious choice, he’s so tired that his brain and his body flat-out refuse to take the couch over a comfortable bed.

The moment his head hits the pillow, all the adrenaline that kept him going for the past three months leaves his body at the same time, and he’s out to the world in less than a minute.

*

There’s a loud yelp and the bed wobbles and Alex bolts upright out of reflex, alarmed and still groggy from sleep. He turns to meet his assailant, and it’s Meredith, still sitting half on top of him, clearly scared by the strange figure she found in her bed.

“What the hell, Mer?” he grumbles, voice thick with sleep, and even through heavy eyelids he can see the way her face changes, from worried to _oh so relieved_ , and a warm feeling cursing through his body starts to slowly wake him up.

“Alex?” she tries, tentative, and he’s enveloped in a hug before he can even try to utter another word, any explanation as to why he’s there. 

She looks and sounds so happy, arms wrapped around him so tightly he’s afraid he’ll have to tell her he can’t breathe, and he really doesn’t understand how he ever thought he could live with his last memory of her being her angry at him. Seeing her face now, even just for the split second before she flung herself into his arms, is enough for the last remnants of the last few days to crumble, and everything inside his feels finally light, safe, at peace. _At home._

Alex chuckles happily into her hair, he hugs her back with one arm while he uses the other to prop them upright on the bed, and he can feel Meredith give in a little, relax, letting the full weight of her body rest against him. Yeah, this is so much better than whatever he thought he was walking himself into tonight. 

“Wait” she pulls back, the crease in her forehead telling him she’s about to yell at him for something. He thought the celebrations would last longer. “I've been looking for you all day!”

Even if he knows he should feel guilty, because he really should have called her at some point and let her know the situation had changed, he can’t find any remorse inside himself, he’s so giddy with relief and happiness that he just hopes he’ll get to win her over by playing it cool and not give in into her scolding. He smirks at her: “I've been here, I've been sleeping.”

“All day?” she asks incredulous and really, maybe someday she’ll find this funny too. 

“All day” he echoes, his face finally splitting into a wide smile because he can’t help it, he’s home and his looming future has disappeared into a cloud of smoke and there’s nothing he has to worry about ever again. Nothing _she_ has to worry about.

Meredith shoves at his shoulder, and he’s still sleepy enough, reflexes still slow and his body tired, that he just lets himself fall back into the bed without much resistance. He figures she will hit him a little, let him pay for making her worry so much. He can’t take her little burst of aggression, figures he even deserves it. So he braces himself for the hits he’s sure are coming, crosses his arms in front of him to protect himself when he sees her lunge into him. She’s tiny and weighs pretty much the same as a sack of potatoes, worst case scenario he’ll have a couple bruises, something to complain about and lord over her for the next couple of week.

Except for the fact that in the fall she must miscalculate their distance, or the arm she extends to keep herself upright over his body must slip. 

Because there is no other explanation to the fact that her lips are crashing into his right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is maybe my favourite chapter of the fic?? idk, there are some scenes i wrote for it that i think came out really good (also that scrub room scene, absolute #1 favourite merlex scene omg)
> 
> also also, i am again very sorry about the cliffhanger. are things finally moving along?? keep reading to find out!
> 
> if you want to tell me your thoughts, leave a comment or find me on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com)


	6. you should be picky about sex cause you're hot

Sometimes, the first few weeks of his intern year feel like they’re from a whole different life.

He has some vague recollection of it, his body having a hard time adjusting to the new rhythm, the constant, blinding fear that someone would figure out he had no idea what he was doing. He also tried to get with every woman he could lay his eyes on, which had little to do with whether he actually liked them or not, and all to do with trying to establish some sort of dominance in the eyes of the other interns.

God, he was such a jerk.

He has since tried to forget that he once tried that on Meredith too, pushed himself against her suggestively and asked her out in the least subtle way he could think of. She almost clocked him on the spot.

_And now look where they have ended up._

All air has left his body, and he has gone so still he’s sure this is what it felt like in Greek mythology to be turned into stone. _I thought Medusa only needed to look at you, not kiss you_ , he thinks, in a moment of absolute incredulous stupidity, his mind going blank for everything that isn’t what’s happening right now. Because here he is.

In Meredith’s bed.

With her lips on his.

And the only thing he can seem to be able to do is make lame jokes to himself while his brain is struggling to catch up.

It lasts less than a second, Maggie must have heard Meredith scream, because she’s now standing in the doorway of the bedroom, her own incredulous and worried look plastered on her face and a million questions directed at him. 

Meredith pulls herself up from him to make room for him to sit up, their faces still too close, and Alex doesn’t know what to make of the look in her eyes: she’s looking expectantly at him, waiting for his answers to Maggie’s questions like _that_ is the more serious thing that’s happening in the room. Not the fact that they just _kissed_. Other than that, Meredith looks perfectly fine, unfazed, and Alex’s certainty starts to falter. 

It might not have been a real kiss, actually.

Barely a graze of their lips, and if he’s being honest with himself, the only reason he felt it happen is that he’s been hyper-aware of Meredith’s presence around him for weeks, and he’s not too proud to admit he has maybe been thinking about what it would feel like to kiss her.

He’s been pushing down those thoughts the second they come up, confused and a little bit ashamed, but nevertheless, they’ve been there.

So, maybe, it wasn’t really a kiss. Maybe she really did just trip over herself and landed too close to his mouth in the haste of pushing him down on the bed. Maybe she didn’t even notice it, and she is looking at him puzzled because he is the one that went still and is now acting confused and weird. Maybe her lips didn’t even brush against his, it was just his cheek, and his brain is short-circuiting due to lack of sleep, adrenaline withdrawal, the scent of her hair on the pillow under his head that’s making it particularly difficult for him to push down those infamous thoughts.

Maybe, he imagined all of it.

_Definitely._

Maggie’s nervous questions are still filling the room, and Meredith seems to remember she still doesn’t know what happened either, and Alex tries to shake the phantom feeling of her lips (the _definitely-not-even-real_ phantom feeling) out of his head while he answers as patiently as he can. But the questions are so many, and he still isn’t sure of what happened himself, so when the door slams shut downstairs and the kids start yelling for them, he exhales a sigh of relief, because it means that, at least for now, he is off the hook.

Meredith sighs, bows her head, and then gets up from the bed, the rush of cold from her absence making him shiver. “Can you two take care of them? I really need to take a shower, today was hell” she says, and she sounds perfectly fine. Maybe nothing happened, actually.

Alex gets out of bed with a groan, and follows Maggie downstairs. Bailey drops his backpack and jumps on him when he sees him, starts to talk a mile a minute about his day, and still Alex’s mind is focused on upstairs, on how at ease and _normal_ Meredith looked, when he feels like the ground has been yanked out from under his feet, leaving him unsteady and unbalanced.

Maybe he really did just imagine it, but the uncertainty still nags at him, and Alex knows the only way to quiet the nervousness that’s eating at him is to get some sort of answer, but how do you casually ask your best friend if you just had your first kiss, because you’re not even sure it happened?

Yeah, he is so screwed.

*

Alex goes back to work, and that should feel normal. He gets a scolding from Bailey, who rips him a new one then proceeds to give him his job back, all in the same sentence. She looks like she’s debating in her head whether to give him a hug, and he gets why. He and Bailey aren’t people who hug. But he’s forever grateful for her, and that should feel normal too.

It sucks that in the same conversation he has to bring up Meredith getting suspended, because he is finally coming back to work and nothing is as it’s supposed to be, everything is upside down, his friends pitted against each other and he knows he’ll go back home tonight and will have to hear Meredith talk his ear off about it.

On second thought, maybe this all exactly how things usually are.

The first time he sets foot into an OR again, he feels like a fish finally jumping back into the water after getting released: his lungs open up and he can breathe again. He has never been one of those _I need to cut or I will die_ surgeons, he’s not Yang, but it is what he’s good at, and right now he needs to feel like he can be good again.

He mostly keeps to himself, staying clear of the little revolution his fellow attendings have got going on. He sympathizes with the cause, of course, but for some reason Minnick isn’t very keen on using peds cases in her teaching, so she mainly leaves him and his service alone, and he’s thankful for that, because it means he doesn't have to get involved in all the drama. It has never been his thing, anyway, now more than ever.

He goes to work, and then he comes home, and Meredith is there, pissed and bored out of her mind, and it makes his heart do little somersaults every time she plops on the couch next to him, an angry rant already on the tip of her tongue.

She hands him a beer, draws up her legs until her icy feet are snuggled under his thigh, and he pretends to get upset that she’s trying to freeze his butt off, instead of what he really wants to do which is cradle her on his lap and kiss her senseless until there is nothing cold about her anymore. The more time it passes, the harder it is for him to fight the urge.

They still haven’t talked about that kiss yet. He’s been racking his brain trying to come up with the right way to ask her about it, tossing and turning at night with all the different, equally terrible ways he could approach her with it, every iteration of the question making him sound either stupid, a total creep, or a combination of both

_Hey Mer, did you by any chance kiss me the other day? No? Ohm okay, just checking._

_Mer, I think you might have kissed me and you’re pretending you didn’t._

_I think we might have kissed, but I won’t know for sure until we try it again, can you help me out with that?._

Except that now that he has let himself think about it, he can’t do anything else. Even if she didn’t actually kiss him, the dam holding his feelings in broke, and now the only thing on his mind is what would it feel like to be kissed by Meredith Grey.

Or, sometimes, maybe if he could kiss her again he would _know_ for sure, he would recognise the feeling, but that would be making everything upside down even at home, and he can’t have that too.

It started that night Amelia came to the house the first time, and Meredith called him into her room when he was leaving the bathroom. It was gradual, the way he started coming up to her room to chat before bed, and he sometimes ended up just sleeping there. The closer the trial got, the more frequently it happened. 

After DeLuca dropped the charges, she just stopped putting out pillows and blankets on the couch for him.

He wasn’t complaining, because Meredith’s bed is comfortable and her room is facing west so it stays dark a little longer in the mornings, but everything else about it is starting to become excruciatingly painful.

In the beginning, they strictly sleep each on one side on the bed, both on their back, barely moving during the night, and it never happens that they touch in their sleep, not even an accidental kick. The more time it passes, the more relaxed they get about it, in some sort of unspoken way. If he wakes up in the middle of the night and she has migrated close enough that her arm is draped across his chest, he tries not to freak out too much, especially because she never seems to have any memory of it the next morning. 

Sometimes, he wakes up in the morning and her back is turned to him, and he has curled up around her instinctively, still enough space between them that you couldn’t say they were spooning, but close enough that people could argue it was just a matter of semantics. Everything is fine, except that Alex’s brain screams at him because her hair is brushing his cheek, her exposed neck inches away, and he could lay a kiss on it if he wanted to.

Because he does, he wants to, and he doesn’t have a single clue on how he should approach that impulse, so every time he forces himself out of bed before he has the chance to do something stupid, and goes downstairs to make breakfast before she can even open her eyes.

They stopped pretending, sure, but Amelia and Maggie still give him pointed looks and make sly comments to him about the whole situation, then stop the second Meredith walks into the kitchen. If anything, abandoning all pretences is making them even more nosey and annoying.

He wants to yell at them that there is no reason to be so overprotective, and even if there was, Meredith definitely wouldn’t be the one that needed protecting.

She’s not the one losing sleep over any of it after all.

*

Alex has to work with Riggs a couple of times over the course of a week, and he longs for the days when everyone rallied behind Hunt and talked about how awful he was. Because now Riggs and Hunt are friends again, and apparently everyone else has forgotten that they hated the guy too, just out of loyalty. 

Alex still does.

He goes around saying it’s because Riggs is smug, and a jerk, and doesn’t care about seniority or working as a team, and luckily everyone believes him, because he can’t fool one bit.

Alex knows him and Meredith are not together, not even casually dating, _not even sleeping together_ , she said it herself, but she can’t hide from him the look she gets when she talks about Riggs sometimes, or the way their bodies line up next to each other when they are talking by the OR board and they think no one is watching. Alex knows Meredith, and he knows that she will deny herself the chance to have him just for Maggie’s sake, she’ll do it without batting an eye, but that doesn’t mean she’ll stop wanting him.

And it eats away at him, because apparently he is the only one that knows, and Meredith wouldn’t be Meredith if she didn’t need to talks things out to a truly impressive extent, so Alex gets to lay in her bed, next to her, and listen to her voice in the pitch black darkness as she whispers her deepest thoughts and feelings about another guy, who he hates, who he sees everyday at work where he has to pretend he is not seething with jealousy.

He goes back to work, everything should feel normal again.

Except nothing does anymore.

*

Maggie’s mom comes back, and she’s sick, and of course Meredith immediately opens up her house to her. Both Diane and Maggie protest, try to say that there’s no need and that they’ll find another place close enough to the hospital so that the whole thing won’t be a bother to anyone. 

But Meredith, of course, wants none of it, and space is cleared up in the study downstairs for Diane to sleep in, and if there was ever a chance for Alex to get a room of his own, it gets thrown out the window right then and there. If he ever hoped he could get some distance from Meredith, a chance to process these new and complicated feelings, this is not the time.

It doesn’t take more than a couple of weeks before Diane gets really, _really_ sick, and Maggie is not doing great at keeping it together. She snaps at everyone, and Alex doesn’t remember the last time he actually saw her smile. It is so unlike Maggie, who can be nervous and lose her cool quickly, but she’s always positive, always has a plan, is always kind. She’s slowly unraveling, and she keeps refusing help.

Of course, the kids notice, because kids always notice these things, and especially because they are all so close to Maggie, and the changes immediately worry them. Alex, pretending to busy himself in the kitchen, listens in on Meredith sitting her kids down, explaining to them that Auntie Maggie’s mom is sick, and that is why their aunt has been acting so strange, because she loves her mom very much and she’s just a little scared, that’s all.

Ellis, too little to do anything more than that, climbs into her mother’s lap and twists her shirt into her tiny fist, blonde head of hair resting on Meredith’s shoulder. Zola, naturally, asks all the right questions, curious about what it is Diane is sick from (and Alex loves that Meredith doesn’t lie to her kids, or try to sugarcoat it, explains things in a way that they will understand), and then she says she is very sorry that Auntie Maggie is sad, and that she’s sad too.

Bailey is staring at his feet, hasn’t said anything or looked up since Meredith sat them down to talk. They all know Bailey has a stronger bond with Maggie than his sisters do, but it’s very unlike him to be this completely still and silent.

“Bailey, sweetheart, is there something you want to ask?” Alex hears Meredith say, uncertain, and somehow he can feel the storm hit seconds before the boy even opens his mouth.

“I don’t want to ask!” he screams at the top of his lungs, “everytime I ask you tell me bad things and I don’t want bad things to happen anymore!”

“Bailey, honey, don’t worry, it’ll be f-”

“You are a liar!” the boy screams even louder, and from the kitchen Alex sees Meredith recoil, and he slowly starts making his way into the other room, ready to jump in if there’s reason to. “You always lie! You say things will be ok, and then they are not!”

Meredith’s lip is quivering, eyes are filling with tears, but she’s a seasoned mother, and she knows she’ll have to keep a straight face to calm the boy down, knows that if she breaks down too right now, all hell will break loose. She clears her throat before she speaks. “Lying is not a good thing. I never lie to you, ever. And sometimes things don’t go the way we hope, but that is not lying” he tells him, in the sweetest, calmest voice she can muster. Alex can see right through it, and he is afraid Bailey can too.

“But you lie! Auntie Maggie’s mom is in the hospital, and everytime you say someone is in the hospital they die! You told us your mommy died, and you said everything will be ok and then Daddy died too! You always lie!” Bailey’s crying now, sobbing, big fat tears rolling off of reddened cheeks. Meredith is not that far behind, her own tears trailing silently down her face. She tries to reach out for the boy, but Bailey slaps her hand away, and he pushes just enough to make himself some way to jump off the couch and run upstairs.

“Ok, this is what we can do” Alex’s voice coming from the kitchen seems to startle Meredith, he can see her jumps up at the sound, turning her head to look up at him, like she’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Hey Zo, why don’t you and Ellis draw a get-well-soon card for Diane? Maggie can bring it to her tomorrow, you can set up on the kitchen table if you want.”

Alex is grateful everyday that the older girl is always so calm and collected, and he smirks a little when they share a quiet high-five and an understanding nod as she passes him on her way to her room, holding Ellis’ hand in her own.

He finally takes the few steps that separate him from Meredith, who is still facing the other way, and puts both hands on her shoulders. He honestly expects her to flinch away from the touch, to get up and walk away without even looking him in the eye. She surprises him when she sags under his hands instead, leaning back against him, her head resting on his stomach. She sighs deeply, and cranes her head until she’s looking up at him upside down, pleading eyes that tell him she wants to know what she should do next. His heart breaks a little bit.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know” she draws a shaky breath. “No. He never said things like that.”

She’s right. Bailey is a happy kid, and doesn’t have much of a temper. Even when something is bothering him, it is very rare that he’d throw a tantrum or yell at anyone, kid or adult.

“You go wash your face, drink some water” he offers, “get ready for bed, it’s late anyway. I’ll go talk to Bailey and see if he’s ok.”

Her eyes widen at that, and she detaches from him long enough to turn around and look up at him properly, “Alex, no. I should do that.”

“You’re gonna cry again, and you’ll scare him even more than he’s already scared. I’ll be fine, it’s better this way.” 

She seems to consider the idea for a long moment, but eventually she briefly nods in agreement, still sniffling. They go upstairs together, and he doesn’t think about it too much when he tosses an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close, their hips bumping awkwardly every time they walk up a step. He can feel her relax a little against him, and he’s grateful for all the times he gets to touch, comfort her like this, without it looking or feeling weird. Maybe the only perk (among a staggering amount of downsides, he’s starting to realize) of developing weird, confusing feelings for your closest friend is that you have to police yourself way less than you might think.

They stop in front of Bailey’s room, and Alex can see that Meredith is still unsure on her feet, probably still considering if she should be the one to go into the room and work it out with her son.

“Mer” Alex grabs her attention, and she looks so lost that he squeezes her shoulders a little, while the creature that is still uncomfortably living in his chest is yelling at him to do a lot more than that, “it will be fine, really. I can talk to him.”

“You shouldn’t have to” she whines.

“Shut up” he scoffs, and drops a kiss on her temple before releasing her from his grip. He watches her drag her feet to her room, and when she disappears he turns around and knocks on Bailey’s door.

The room is dark, the shutters already closed for the night, and the only reason he can make out the shape of Bailey’s curled up body under the covers is because of the light streaming in from the hallway.

“Go away” is the muffled sound that comes out of the pile of covers, “I don’t want to talk.”

“Then we don’t talk” Alex says, and he lets himself slide down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed. “I’ll just sit here until you tell me to go, or you fall asleep, is that okay?”

The silence stretches for long minutes, almost enough that it might seem like the boy has fallen asleep, but Alex has been around enough kids to know that the sniffling sounds, and the way Bailey keeps tossing in his little cocoon mean that he’s still wide awake. So, sure enough, eventually a small teary voice pipes up.

“Is Mommy mad at me?”

“Of course she’s not, don’t worry.”

“But I yelled, and I pushed her. She always says we shouldn’t push people.”

“Your mom understands that you were pretty upset, she is not mad.”

“I was mean” he says, and he still hasn’t come out from under the covers, but Alex can tell he is crying again, or still, from the way his voice is all broken up.

“Maybe you can apologize to her tomorrow, but I promise you she could never be mad at you.”

“Really?” the voice comes clearer now, and Alex looks up to see Bailey’s little face poking out of the blanket, puffy and red, eyes shining and lips quivering.

“Of course” Alex says again, because kids are easier than adults, promises don’t have to be as elaborate, they can be simple, and the only requirement is that they have to stay true. Luckily, in this case, Alex knows he could never go wrong saying Meredith will love her children no matter what. 

“Is Auntie’s mom going to die?”

The question shocks him a little, and Alex takes his time considering his answer. He can tell that the boy is having a hard time with the idea of hospitals and death, and he doesn’t want to lie, when it is clear it would upset him even more in the long run, but he can’t also ignore the truth that Diane is too sick at this point to be optimistic about it. Maggie is already doing it enough for the rest of them.

“She might. She is really sick, but that doesn’t mean that her doctors will stop trying to get her well again. And we shouldn’t stop hoping either.”

The boy doesn’t say anything, but he untangles himself from the cover and sits up, crawling down the bed until he is laying on his stomach, feet on the pillow and face closer to where Alex is sitting.

“When Mommy was in the hospital, you said she was really sick, but that the doctors would make her better.”

“I remember” Alex says softly, smiling at him to encourage him to continue.

“Were you scared?”

“Yes, I was” he answers honestly, and his throat feels tight against his words. He really thought he’d finally gotten over this, but apparently he was wrong. Great, now he’s gonna cry too.

“Me too” Bailey offers, in the tiniest voice, “but we hoped even if we were scared, and Mommy got better, just like you said” Bailey muses, and Alex can see the wheels in his head turning as he works around the problem, coming to the conclusion on all his own. “If we hope very hard, maybe it will be okay this time too.”

Alex considers whether he should stick it out right now, explain to the boy that it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the thought process is the right one, and for now that’s the thing that matters, so he nods and smiles until Bailey’s face matches his, toothy grin under still puffy eyes.

“Do you think it’s okay if I go apologise to Mommy now? I don’t want to wait until tomorrow” Bailey asks, hopeful, and Alex doesn’t have the heart to say no to him, so they walk hand in hand to the end of the hall, and he lets Bailey knock on the door and walk into the room first, his tiny feet tapping on the wooden floors when he runs straight into Meredith’s waiting arms, her face lit up by his presence.

“I am sorry Mommy” Bailey says, barely understandable from his place burrowed deep into Meredith’s neck.

“It’s okay sweetie” she tells him, stroking his hair, eyes swelling up from the emotion, “I am not mad.” She kisses Bailey’s forehead, and when she looks up her eyes meet Alex’s, who is still leaning against the door. She smiles at him, grateful and full of warmth, and he can’t help but surrender to the pull under his rib cage that tells him he needs to get closer to her. 

He does his best not to rock the bed too much when he sits onto it, but Bailey must feel the dip to the mattress because he looks up from his mother’s shoulder, and immediately launches himself onto Alex. The impact is so unexpected that he tumbles backwards, and Bailey is now laying on his stomach, refusing to let him get up again, so Alex just flings his legs onto the bed and makes himself comfortable.

“Mommy, Alex says that if we hope really hard maybe a miracle will help Diane!”

“Oh, did he now” Meredith says, shooting Alex an amused grin over her son’s head, as she scoots down until she’s laying on the bed too, her face turned to look at the both of them.

“I didn’t say _a miracle_ , Bailey” he corrects the child, “doctors make people better, not miracles.”

“Oh, right” Bailey says in a droopy voice, and Alex can’t really see him now that he’s laying on his chest, but he feels the boy twirling one finger in his t-shirt like he does with his blanket when he gets tired, and the combination of that and the voice tells him the boy will probably be out like a light in just a few minutes.

Alex turns his attention to Meredith then, who is studiously concentrated on her son’s face, a soft smile on her lips. She looks better than before, less frazzled, and Alex’s just glad that she seems less affected by Bailey’s earlier words than he feared she might have been. When she speaks up her tone is almost a whisper, and he knows Bailey must have finally fallen asleep. 

“Maggie will have a hard time being without her mom.”

“Yeah, she will” he says, somberly, because unlike the two of them, Maggie had a normal childhood, she’s close to her mom, and losing a parent is never easy at any age. Hell, he was a mess after losing his father and he didn’t even like the guy. “She’ll be ok eventually. She has us.”

“Do you think they will be okay even with no dad around?”

_Ha, yes, here it is_ , he thinks, because he knew Bailey’s words had taken a toll on her: he threw Derek dying right in her face, and now it’s all she can think about. She will go over it again and again, trying to figure out what she’s doing wrong, whether she should talk about Derek more, or less, and she’ll make herself crazy in the process, because the truth is, there is never a right answer.

“We didn’t have one, and we turned out fine. We both had no dad and barely a mom, and neither one if us turned out to be a criminal or anything…” He sees a glint of something in her eyes and he finishes, grimacing, before she can make fun of him herself, “...most recent events notwithstanding.”

She laughs, and he relaxes when he sees the way her face settles into a content smile. “You are a great mom, Mer. These kids already have more than you and I ever did, and they’re going to be perfectly okay just because of that.”

She smiles again, and adjusts herself on the bed to get more comfortable before taking his hand in hers, and the little jolt of electricity he’s almost used to by now runs through his arm straight into his heart. 

He knows he needs to do something about this soon, but this night feels already so full of loud feelings that he’s not sure this is the right moment to bring any of that up with her. He knows he wouldn’t get the response he hopes for.

_What is it that he hopes for, again?_

“You know, I had a dream once” she says, out of the blue. He trains his eyes on hers, curious. “One of those dreams where you are thinking about something as you fall asleep and you end up dreaming it.”

“What was it about?”

“What would have happened if my mother and Richard had gotten together, how different my life would have been... how I would have turned out if I’d had a dad.”

He makes a noncommittal sound of understanding, a hum in his throat as he stretches on the bed, careful not to disturb Bailey, lifting one arm to rest his head on, the other hand drawing light circles on the boy’s back. 

“Cristina had a fringe.”

“Oh, I see” he lets out a breathy chuckle, “it really focused on the important stuff.”

She grins at him, rolls herself over so she’s laying on her side. Her hands are tucked under the pillow, propping her head up a little, and when he turns his head in her direction he finds her studying him in silence. 

There is something in her expression that makes him think she’s not telling him quite the whole story. At the same time, he doesn’t really want to ask: half of it is being wary of every movement or sound that might wake Bailey, but the other half... He worries the sound of his voice will make her retreat into icy silence, break this bubble they found themselves into: in bed, faces way too close, staring intently at each other. 

It’s not the first time, not by a long shot. With sleeping together (not _together_ , but _in the same bed_ , he has to correct himself) regularly came the easiness, and they slowly started to get more comfortable with testing the boundaries that had always been in place for as long as he can remember.

They had been a silent, implicit reminder that their friendship _had_ to have a line somewhere, even if thin, and blurry, and from an outside perspective probably downright invisible. Despite all of that, they both knew it existed. 

But still, lately, he sometimes feels like they’re both toeing on the line to test the waters, and it’s getting a little harder for him to tear himself away from her. This moment feels exactly like one of those, where he knows that he could just move forward a few inches and he wouldn’t have to wonder anymore. 

_Gotta tear yourself away, Alex._

“What is it?” he prompts, finally, because she’s still looking at him with that strange gaze and she’s not talking anymore. 

She doesn’t retreat. She glances at him, almost surprised that he wants to know more. She furrows her brow, lost in thought, considers her words for a second before speaking up. “We were together.”

“We who?”

“We. You and I.”

_Excuse me?_

“ _We_ were together?” he chokes, hopes she doesn’t notice but she probably does. “When was this?”

“Around the time we finally got Zola, I think. She must have been the reason I was thinking about parents.”

“And in this scenario you were with me instead of Shepherd?”

He is processing the new information. _Why would she dream about being with him?_

He knows what’s the most probable reason he slipped into her subconscious: he almost cost her her entire family, and it was a very stressful couple of months for her, but the idea still feels totally outlandish to him. She wasn’t even speaking to him then!

“You cheated on me with Kepner” she replies, in some sort of roundabout way of saying _yes_ without having to actually admit it. “That’s just my luck, even in dreams.”

_Ha. That makes more sense._

He snorts his dissent, and with that they fall silent, and he tries to imagine what that world would have been like. He has so many questions, but one thought above the others keeps pushing at the front of his brain, and he has to let it out. 

“You know I would never actually cheat on you, right?” the words come out urgent before he can police himself, needing to be reassuring. 

“Yeah, I know” is her soft acknowledgment, they stare at each other in the quiet atmosphere of this moment, and not for the first time tonight he feels the urge to just _get closer, get as close as she allows you to, and…_

“By the way, with Kepner? Thanks a lot, Mer” he forces himself to say instead, kicking himself for being such a coward, but she melts into a fit of laughter that he can’t help but join in on, and the vibrations must disturb Bailey, who seems to wake up with a jolt, bleary, sleep-laden eyes opening toward his mother.

“Hello sweetheart” she coos immediately, composing herself, smiling warm at her son. 

She extends her hand for him to join her on her side of the bed, but Bailey scrunches up his face at the touch, squirms and twists until he’s wrapped even more tightly around Alex, face turned from Meredith and burrowed in Alex’s shoulder. He settles again, deep breathing resuming almost immediately, and Alex is sure the boy is already fast asleep again, probably hadn’t even registered his mother’s face when he opened his eyes. 

Meredith is still frozen in shock, eyes wide and eyebrows shot up. Alex is sure she’ll get offended, hurt at the rejection, but instead he finds himself shushing her when she bursts out laughing loudly.

“Oh my god!” she gasps for air, “and here I thought I had a few more years before becoming his second choice.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just because I’m not all skin and bones like you, I’m probably more comfortable” Alex offers, and something flashes in her eyes that he can’t quite catch, it’s gone so fast. 

Another long moment passes, her shoulders relax, and when he sees her close her eyes he knows it won’t be long until she’s out too. 

“I’m gonna stay a while longer, ok?” he whispers, “I’m bringing him to his room when I’m sure he’s really out.”

“Uhm, ok” she manages, voice small, already half-asleep. She has curled up into a ball, but her arm is extended toward his side of the bed, her hand finding his and squeezing. 

His heart skips a beat. As always. And still, he can’t quite get used to it.

He tells himself he’s gonna wait a few more minutes and then he’ll get up, out of the boy’s vicious grip that is frankly becoming a bit uncomfortable, and out of this hand holding situation that he really, really shouldn’t read too much into. 

Just a few more minutes. 

It’s entirely possible that Zola finds the three of them in the exact same position when she comes looking for her mother the next morning. 

*

When Meredith calls him to tell him about the emergency landing on her way to the conference in Denver, his heart stops for what feels like a full minute, and he can barely hear her over the blood rushing in his ears while she explains what happened, what she did for a patient, how she and Riggs are going to go grab dinner now.

He doesn’t have time to fully process any of it, because she is begging him to call Arizona and let her know that Meredith’s okay before she hears anything on the news and she freaks out.

He calls Arizona who, as Meredith predicted, yells at him for not having enough informations, and _is he really sure Meredith’s alright._ Yes, he is sure, he tells her, and in the back of his mind there’s just the tiniest nagging feeling, like he won’t actually be sure until he can set his eyes on her. Flashes of the last time this happened replay in his head, and the more he thinks about what happened then, the more he thinks about what could have happened this time around, and if he keeps on thinking like this he will start hyperventilating, so he chooses to focus his energy on the less serious, definitely more selfish issue at hand.

She was on the plane with Riggs. 

It could mean nothing, and to most people it would (Arizona didn’t bat an eye at that when he told her), but Alex _knows_ , somehow. The way she said his name on the phone, how she paused for a second before saying it, like she didn’t want to, like she felt as if she was admitting some sort of big fat secret. No one else would have caught it, but to his ears it sounds exactly like what it is: she gave in, she’s admitting to herself that she finally took the leap.

Well, to herself and to him, because now he knows it too.

And knowing _sucks._

Alex longs for the time, a couple months ago, when he had to sit there and listen to her go on and on about Riggs and how she could not be with him. He thought that was the worst thing he would have to go through, but he hadn’t considered the possibility of having to sit there and listen to her go on and on about Riggs and how _happy_ she is that she gets to be with him. He feels a little sick at the idea.

She comes back from her cut-short trip two days later, and she doesn’t even have the decency to look a little guilty. She looks beautiful, glowing, so ecstatic it is almost unfair. 

Lucky for him, his reputation as the hospital’s grump is so well cultivated that she doesn’t seem too fazed by it when he starts answering in two-word sentences every time she tries to ask for his opinion on the subject. He’s the only one she’s told, apparently, and he feels like they’ve gone back to intern year when she used to pester him with all her dumb, random worries. Except this time it feels different, because they’re not interns anymore, and he can’t just listen to her talk about the impending doom looming on her newfound happiness and offer her a quippy, sarcastic one-liner. He can’t share a bed with her when he knows he’s not the only one she’s sharing it with.

He makes excuses, and sleeps at the hospital every night that week.

That’s why he’s already there when Veronica and Jeremy come back. 

Veronica’s at thirty-four weeks, belly round and full, and it’s such a stark contrast to the ashiness of her skin and the way her hair frames her face, lifeless, that he has to try harder than usual to be professional during the visit. 

Pregnant mothers are supposed to be vibrant and full of life, and instead Veronica looks just as she is supposed to in her condition: tired, and dying. It doesn’t feel right, at all.

Jeremy looks just as bad, worn thin and worried sick under another dorky sweater, his hands intertwined with Veronica’s and never disconnecting. He still reminds Alex of himself more and more, the way he won’t leave her side, looking at the doctors like they’re aliens, but at the same time like he’s holding on for dear life to every last word they are saying.

Alex wants to believe that there isn’t anything wrong with Veronica, that hers are just symptoms of pregnancy and nothing more, not that she’s dying faster than they already know she is. He knows he is kidding himself, and there is some part of him that wishes he weren’t a doctor, so he could keep pretending at least for a while longer.

Tests come back, and they are as bad as they were expecting them to be. Amelia and Arizona have her prepped for surgery and the only job left for him to do is to take Jeremy up to the OR floor, and fit him with a pink-colored paper cap and gown that hang too loose over his body.

Jeremy keeps looking around, like he’s trying to memorize every detail of the unfamiliar place, trying to understand everything about it in the hope of making it easier, somehow.

“Hey man” Alex approaches him, hand reassuringly on his shoulder. He doesn’t know if the man can see the worry on his face, he hopes not. Doctors shouldn’t look worried. “They’re both going to be fine.”

“People think what we’re doing is idiotic” Jeremy says, faintly, “they say Veronica letting herself die wasn’t worth it just to have an accidental baby.”

Alex has had an uneasy feeling itching just under his skin all day now, and he tries to shake it off as he answers. “There are people that will never get it, you can’t think about that. What matters is that the two of you do.”

“They say we are not married, so it wouldn’t have mattered.”

It is getting increasingly hard for Alex to breathe, because this is feeling more and more like something that is hitting a little too close to home and he’s not sure he can deal with it right now. No one has ever came out and said those same things to his face, but he’s not deaf, he’s heard rumors, and what’s worse is that those are the same things he’s been saying to himself for weeks now.

_You are not married._

_You shouldn’t get so upset over her having her own life._

_You can’t be more than you already are._

He pulls himself together long enough to get through the c-section, and to check the baby out. He watches over the new family having their first real moment together, and hates himself when he has to cut it short, Everything starts happening way too fast, as it always does, and Veronica’s vitals start dropping in a way he really wishes he didn’t know what it meant, he hopes to be wrong for once.

Of course he’s not.

*

Alex lets himself fall on the nearest bed, breathing heavily, irregularly. Every attempt at calming his fast beating heart is useless, and he’s not sure how long he lays in the dark on call room before he can feel himself come back to normal. He is staring at the ceiling, unable to move, when the door opens and, from the corner of his eye, he can make out a short figure coming into the room.

“Karev, I saw Veronica’s name on the board, I wanted to ask how that wen- oh no” Bailey only needs to take a look at him to have her answer, and her features quickly rearrange in sorrow and grief. “I am so sorry” she tells him, doesn’t come any closer but shuts the door behind her before leaning against it. They both let the silence stretch between them, neither of them wanting to change the subject just yet.

“He’s going to have to take care of their kid on his own” Alex says eventually, not moving from his spot on the bed, flat on his back and with his arms down the sides. He doesn’t turn his head to look at Bailey, he’s afraid that if he does he’s going to start crying again. She’s seen him like that enough times this year alone.

“He’ll be fine” she just says, tone soft.

“He thought he would have her by his side forever” his voice breaks. It’s getting increasingly more difficult to ignore the fact that every time he talks about Jeremy and Veronica, it’s not really the two of them that pop up in his head, and the more he fights the realization, the more he can feel something inside him breaking.

“That’s just not how things happen sometimes” she is still trying to comfort him, and he steals a glance to see that she looks a little worried. She knows, in that way she has of always knowing everything, that he has taken this particular loss hard, and maybe she also feels a little bit bad herself for not being in the OR again this time, but he can tell she’s not really connecting the actual dots of his thoughts. 

Not even Bailey can’t figure out what is actually going on in his head. He feels like that should be some kind of cosmic sign, but then again he never believed in that stuff.

“Did you know that Meredith is seeing Riggs now?” he asks, because he can’t help himself, he needs to get it out even if Meredith swore him to secrecy. But she’s telling Maggie today, and Bailey is the last person that would go around spreading gossip anyway, so he’s fine.

There’s a beat of silence when she must be going wide-eyed in shock, but he’s quickly rewarded with her trademark scoff, and he turns his head just enough to see her annoyed expression staring back at him, exasperated face and the usual response already on her tongue.

“Why do people ever think it is okay for them to tell me about Meredith Grey’s business” she huffs, “I have never wanted to hear about Meredith Grey’s business.”

It is exactly the reaction he expected her to have, down to the inflession in her voice and the way she rolls her eyes, and for some reason that irks him: he feels like he’s been uprooted and spinning out of control, nothing that matters making sense anymore, and being confronted with the fact that actually everything is still the same, it’s him that is different, is too strong of a reminder of the mess he’s in. “I think she might be in love him” he blurts out, for no other reason than to try and surprise her, get her to have a reaction that will match his feeling of being lost, at least a little.

“What makes you think that?” she asks, her pitch getting higher. He gloats a little at his victory, Bailey’s puzzled expression validating his own feelings a little. He still tries not show too much, and his answer is as non-committal as he can muster.

“She made me take down the tumor on the wall.”

“The what?”

He is surprised to realize she doesn’t know. She’s known them so long, such a permanent, omniscient feature in their lives that it’s just now occurring to him that she probably isn’t actually aware of every tiny little facet of their lives, as much as she likes to complain that she does.

“Shepherd drew Isaac’s spinal tumor on their bedroom wall. Mer had it up until, like, a week ago” he explains simply, matter-of-factly, because the fact that the drawing exists is not the reason for his confession, the fact that she made him take it down is. For Riggs.

Well, she didn’t exactly say it was for Riggs, but it was clear that it was, and the next day when he went into Amelia’s room (his room? Who even knows at this point) to look for one of his boxes, he saw it propped against the wall. So, not only did she take it down, she apparently gave it away entirely, and if you’re privy to the latest events in her life, like he is, it’s not hard to figure out why she did it for. She did it for Riggs.

He’s still trying to process all of that.

“Well, that’s good, right?” Bailey interjects, hopeful, and the beast in his chest moves uncomfortably, curling over itself defensively. Alex knows what he’s supposed to say, what he to say.

Of course it’s good. It’s good that she’s moving on and realizing she doesn’t have to sleep in a shrine the rest of her life, that she can live how she want to. Alex watched her for years now, tentatively trying to work herself a way out of her grief, and it makes him so happy and proud to see her finally succeeding at it. 

He just, maybe, feels gutted that he’s realized there are better ways he would like her to do that. 

“I think that’s great, don’t you?” Bailey presses him, when he gets so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t answer, “It sounds like she wasn’t doing herself any good, keeping on sleeping under that thing.”

“I- I guess” he replies, and of course the stutter gives him away, combined with the way he side-eyes her just to make sure she’s buying his obvious lie. 

He is met with narrow eyes, and a suspicious statement. “You aren’t happy about it.”

_Crap._

“Of course I am.”

“Karev” she warns him, almost threateningly, stretching the _e_ in his name the way he wishes he could say he’s not at all used to.

“I- I don’t think I am” he lets out in a shaky breath, his confession making him close his eyes against the weight of it. He exhales again, feeling simultaneously lighter and heavier than before, trying to calm his nerves and give Bailey nothing to latch onto.

Bailey takes an intake of air so sharp the sound of it echoes in the room loudly, and it startles him. It’s such a disproportionate and unusual reaction for her, that Alex has to open his eyes, sitting up on his elbows and looking up at her trying to figure out what happened. 

She is looking at him dumbstruck, like she’s just realized something and she’s not quite sure she can believe it. After that initial moment, her face softens, and when she opens her mouth she almost sounds like she wants to cry.

“Oh, Karev.”

That does not sound promising.

“ _Oh Karev_ what” he barks, trying to hold onto the last shreds of dignity he think he has left.

“I didn’t know if I was right” she whispers, eyes trained on him, and he immediately knows he’s screwed. Bailey is never wrong about anything, she’s surely figured him out, and if she has he is going to have a hard time dodging her questions. He squares up, and snarls at her in his best aggressive tone.

“Right about what?”

“You know about what” she asks him a little worried. Her features soften then, eyes turning warmer and voice lowering, like she’s trying not to scare him away. “...Am I right about this?”

He wants to tell her to shut up, before remembering you do not tell Dr Bailey to shut up, for any reason, ever. He’s annoyed about this whole conversation, because it is something he doesn’t particularly want to voice out loud, and mainly because he hates that now that someone has figured it out, it suddenly feels real. He wants to go back to when so one knew, that was easier.

He fixes his gaze on the floor, his hands gripping the edge of the mattress so tightly his knuckles are turning white. He’s vaguely aware of the fact that he looks more like a stubborn, temper-tantrum-throwing child more than anything else, but his mind his spinning in a thousand different directions and he can’t just think straight. Bailey found him out in ten questions or less, and his brain activated his flight response before he could do anything about it.

He’s shaking, and he feels hot all over like he’s been running a fever, and somehow he’s stuck in place, under Bailey’s maternal but unyelding gaze, the one he has never been able to lie to. He has gotten pretty good in the past couple months at lying to himself, but for some reason now that he’s in front of Bailey he can’t anymore. What’s worse, he’s starting to realize he doesn’t want to.

“What about Wilson?” Bailey asks, detaching herself from the door and covering the small distance to the bed Alex’s occupying. He straightens up, flings his legs off the bed to sit up and make space for her, but she doesn’t sit. She stands in front of him, and even with him sitting she is barely taller than him, looking down questioningly.

“What about her, we’re not getting back together” he tells her, and he realises he hasn’t thought of Jo in ages, not in any significant way. She came looking for him after DeLuca dropped the charges, and even that had barely felt like a blip in his radar.

They work together, manage to be civil around one another, but he would be lying if he said he gave any of those interactions more weight than what he gives to working with any other resident. It hurts a little, finally coming to terms with how little he’s affected by her now, but it’s just the truth of it. He’s made peace with that.

“So, Grey?” Bailey presses, with an unreadable look in her eyes. Alex has to look the other way.

“I still don’t know what you want me to say”, a last attempt to throw her off.

“Alex” she says softly, “are you in love with her?”

The straightforward question knocks all the air out of his lungs, and he stares up at her like she’s stabbed him in the chest.

He knows, in some rational part of his brain, that this is a legitimate question, and a natural follow up to the conversation they’ve been having, he shouldn’t be really surprised by it. Even more than that, not when it’s the question he’s been asking himself every night for months now.

But there’s a difference between mulling over something in the privacy of your own head, late at night when the world is sleeping, and getting slapped in the face with it by your boss while you are already having a crappy day.

“I- I can’t be” he whispers eventually, his face scrunched up in pain when the words finally leave his mouth, and Bailey’s face falls, he hears her take a deep, controlled breath when she finally sits on the bed next to him.

He wants to run, get up and leave this dimly lit room and the looming presence of Bailey’s reassuring hand on his thigh, the weight of what he just said pressing down on his shoulders.

He thought that finally admitting it, even it this sort of roundabout way, would make him feel better, lighter, but somehow it feels like the weight has doubled just by speaking it into existence, he’s still carrying it and now Bailey is too. Double the weight, double the risk of it spilling out now.

“Why not?”

“She’s with Riggs” he says, as if that’s the end of it, the ultimate excuse.

“You said that already.”

He considers for a moment what he wants to say next. If he had to channel his younger self, he’d say he doesn’t give a crap about Riggs, that he’s done being the one that gets the girl taken away from him by other guys while he just stands there and watches. It happened with Izzie, _twice_ , with Jo her intern year when she was going out with that jerk in OB and he was pretending to be the perfect friend. Standing there and watching never got him anywhere, he’s done with all of that.

If he were being selfish, he’d say he wants to go home, crawl into Meredith’s bed and cover her body and mouth with his until they both forget all about Riggs even existing. He’d tell her everything he has been too scared to say, and never stop talking until he could convince her he was just what she needs.

There’s just one problem with all of that.

At the end of the day, what he really wants is for Meredith to be _okay_. He doesn’t really care about making his move if the result is going to be her spiraling because of it. He could try, and get turned down, and that would ruin a decade old relationship which would leave both of them reeling, trying to cope with the consequences.

Or, and he can’t even bring himself to imagine it, she would reciprocate and then she’ll have to break things off with Riggs, and they’ll maybe be happy for a while, but neither of them have ever been lucky enough to have _happy_ last for long.

In the end, he and Meredith being together is just a statistics problem: the likelihood of a bad outcome far outgrows the chance of a good one. The current situation, however, is a certainty, and for once in their (hers, really) lives, it looks like _happy_ is something that could work for a while. He really can’t bring himself to spoil it for her, no matter what it might mean for him. 

“If she’s with him, and if she really is in love, it doesn’t really matter how I feel. She deserves to feel happy.”

“So do you, Karev” Bailey says, squeezes his leg again, “so do you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry this took a while to update! i got a terrible migraine because i spent too much time in front of screens and i had to keep off my laptop for a couple days...
> 
> i hope you liked this chapter! i promised y'all things would start to move along and here we are... we're into full-blown pining territory now lol. i have so many feelings about them at this point i could write an entire other fic about this era... maybe someday it'll happen
> 
> if you want, you can leave a comment, or come find me on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com)!


	7. we're family, but i don't call her my sister

Alex remembers the day George O’Malley died. 

As blurry as those months were, he still remembers that specific day clearly: he was spreading himself way too thin trying to deal with Izzie getting sicker and sicker, so at first the news that O’Malley had decided to enlist in the Army had only been kind of a peripheral thing. Alex sat in the cafeteria with Meredith and Yang as they argued about it, and tuned them out while he worried about what the news would do to Izzie, if it would upset her to the point of making her even more sick. Going from speculation, to discovering he was hurt, and after that having to face the fact that he was dead- it all happened too quickly. 

At lunch they were questioning his choices, and by the end of the same day George O’Malley was dead.

Today, Alex feels like he’s been stuck in some sort of cruel time-loop, the kind from a parallel universe where things happen in reverse, where people come back from the dead just when you’ve come to terms with the fact that they’re gone.

As it always happens at Grey Sloan, word travels fast and he learns about it from a nurse while he’s writing up orders, all the way up on the peds floors, a place where neither Hunt nor Riggs are usually present. Alex tries to control the situation, tells the nurse she shouldn’t speculate about people’s personal business, but he’s half-hearted in his lecture, knowing she’ll turn around and start again as soon as he leaves the floor. Gossip really is the hospital’s natural currency.

Alex’s not stupid, he knows what this means. In a normal world, he would be having the appropriate reaction to this kind of news: he’d be happy and relieved that Megan Hunt, a presumed dead Army surgeon, has been found alive and, all things considered, rather healthy. Anyone should be ecstatic at the news, let alone said Army doctor’s brother’s friends. There really shouldn’t be anything else going through Alex’s head right now other than feeling happy for Hunt and his family.

Alex’s first thought shouldn’t be that Meredith is probably having, or is on the verge of having, some sort of meltdown because what happened together changed her entire life. And most importantly, he really shouldn’t be thinking about what this might mean for him.

_You are not the center of the universe, Alex. Grow up._

*

He comes home, and the house is dark as it usually is at this hour. He tosses keys, bag, and jacket in the general direction of the couch, knowing full well he’ll kick himself for it in the morning when he’s running late and he can’t find any of it, and makes his way upstairs. 

The thought of Meredith has been a constant buzzing sound at the back of his mind all day, but he hasn’t seen or heard from her since they ran into each other in the commotion caused by the fire. That was almost two days ago: because of that, what was supposed to be a regular shift extended into endless hours of damage control, in an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation that has left him exhausted. And yet, even in the constant frenzy, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about her, and what state he might find her in when he’ll open the door.

To be totally honest, he’s bracing himself for the worst.

He has pictured coming home to find her pacing the room frantically, ready to bite the head off of the first person who’d try to calm her down. Or, even more likely, sitting on the floor, lips attached to a bottle of tequila. 

Instead, she’s curled up in bed with Zola, and for a second he thinks she’s asleep before he spots Meredith’s hand moving over the girl’s head, stroking her hair, gently pulling at some of her curls. He toes off his shoes and approaches the bed, and if his voice goes soft and quiet it’s only because he doesn’t want to wake Zola, and not because he’s relieved Meredith’s fine, right?

“I heard” he announces, no preamble. There’s no point in dancing around the subject now. “About Owen’s sister, and Riggs, and you.” He gets into bed and she doesn’t move an inch, clearly not surprised or startled by his presence.

“You heard a lot of things.”

“Yeah. Shepherd texted” he grimaces, “she’s chatty, even by text.”

“Has she landed yet?” Meredith asks him quietly, unfazed by his attempt to distract her with his Amelia-bashing. She’s back to focusing her whole attention on Zola’s hair, almost as if she’s trying to seem uninterested in the answer. She looks really sad, and it breaks his heart.

“No, not yet.”

She lets the silence stretch for a few more minutes, and he just stares at the ceiling, laying on his back with his arms straight down his side, on top of the covers. Lately, he has reverted back to this, his go-to position before all of this messy… _feelings_ situation started. He used to get onto her bed all the time and it would mean nothing, and he thinks that if he can just stick to that again, he’ll be fine. That’s why he’s careful now, why he won’t allow himself anything more than this, because he’s afraid he’ll do something stupid like stretch his arms toward her and pull her into him and never let her go.

“I was so relieved” she huffs, like she’s talking to herself more than to him, “I was sick all day, and then I heard his fiancée was alive and I was so relieved.”

He wants to laugh, because that is the exact same way he’s felt all day: relieved, hopeful, a little excited, and deep down he’s known it was not for the reasons other people were feeling the same. He had to kick himself multiple times for it, and then he came home just to find out she has been feeling the same. He’s coming to realize how often that happens, them being on the opposite side from everyone else, together.

Problem is, this is the kind of thing he would want to share with her, but there is no way he can tell her about it this time. So he doesn’t laugh, and instead he just says what he thinks will make her feel better.

“Because you’re a good person.”

 _Unlike me,_ he almost adds.

“No, because I found a way to make all this crazy day about me” she laughs bitterly. There’s a certain sense of guilt that comes with her relief, like she knows she shouldn’t feel like she barely got off the hook, not at a moment like this. She doesn’t need to explain further than that, he already knows before she even tells him. “It all just got too real. Inviting him home to meet my kids just made me physically ill, I felt like I was cheating.”

Alex nods, because he understands. They never really talked about it before, about Derek and letting go. He could tell, in the past few months, that she was really starting to give it a try, but he never expected her to magically stop feeling like this just because she finally decided to actually date the guy. Those feelings never really go away. 

It sucks that he already knows he’ll forever have to compete with that, if he ever works up the courage to do anything about it. 

“I don’t want to be in love again” she finishes and his heart drops at the conviction in her voice that feels like it’s crushing all his dreams, “not until it feels like family.”

_Wait a second._

That is not what he expected her to say, and the beast in his chest revives immediately, doing little somersaults while Alex’s brain is still trying to catch up. What the hell does _that_ mean?

Because to him, this would be a no brainer. When he was young and stupid he would have denied it, but he’s older now, way past trying to act like the tough guy: Meredith _is_ his family, has been for so long he’s not even sure he could pinpoint the exact moment it happened, but it’s true. She, and her kids ( _and the sisters_ ), are the closest thing he’s ever gotten to a real family, and he knows, in some remote corner of his brain, that Meredith feels the same way. 

He knows, like he knows her favorite pizza order, but also like he knows that she’ll wake up from nightmares sometimes and he has learned to guess from one look if she’ll want to talk about it or not. He knows because he _knows_ her, and when she’s talking about family it’s not presumptuous to assume she’s including him in that too.

So, _what the hell does that mean?_

“Good” he eventually blurts out, maybe a little too fast. He kicks himself internally because of it, curses his impatience, hopes she hasn’t noticed the hopeful hilt in his voice. He has to try and cover in some ways, and in his panic he comes up with the lamest comeback possible. “Cause Riggs? I never liked that guy.”

She laughs finally, a true laugh, immediately stifled when Zola stirs between them. 

“Is it too soon?” Alex teases and grins back at her, his own nerves relaxing a little. He always feels better when he can bring things to a place that’s a little more familiar, and he can pretend the heaviness in his chest whenever he sees her doesn’t exist.

“Shut up, _I_ liked him” she laughs again, and this time mirth actually reaches her eyes, and Alex feels his heart burst with affection, the actual meaning of her words not important.

“I know you did” he concedes, “I don’t understand why, but I know.” He grows serious again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. Something else will come along” she says, the conviction in her voice sparking enough curiosity in him to do what he promised himself he wouldn’t do.

Restraint has never been his strongest suit, and he already knows he’ll regret it as he turns on his side too to look at her better, scooting closer. He can barely see her face from the way she’s burrowed under the covers and behind Zola’s messy hair. She looks small, and a little sad, and very very beautiful. He wants to reach over and touch her cheek.

He knew this wasn’t a good idea. 

“How do you know?”

“I didn’t think anyone ever would, but then it happened, so that must mean it will again” she reasons. “I just have to be ready for it next time.”

He knows there have been other times where he could have taken his shot, where he should have just worked up the courage to just tell her. If she was literally anyone else, he wouldn’t even be thinking twice about it, but with her, he’s always making up some excuse not to do it. This feels like one of those times. 

He wants to speak up, tell her _I’m the next person_ , while the other half of his brain is pulling him away, telling him there is no way in hell she’s going to take it well when she got broken up with no longer than six hours ago. 

He can’t do this if he’s not sure she’ll say yes, or his heart might just break right in half and never recover.

And then, Zola stirs and opens her eyes so it’s not really a problem anymore.

More excuses.

*

As it turns out, Meredith saying she’s ready for something else is a downright lie. Or, at least, it looks like it’s going to be a long way to get there.

She gets herself involved in Megan Hunt’s surgery, and Alex suspects it’s for no other reason than to get herself tied up in all the drama in her trademark self-destructive way. There’s no other reason that justifies her having to deal with Riggs, Hunt and Amelia fighting, and when he sees Teddy Altman walking down the ICU corridor, Alex thinks he might have seen a ghost.

If she asked him for his opinion (not that she would actually do that), he’d tell her it looks a lot like she’s trying to atone for some crime she didn’t even commit.

She keeps saying she is just doing it for the surgery, that she is the best person for the job, and even though everyone else doesn’t seem to believe her at all, he is willing to concede that at least part of that is the truth: she saw someone in need and knew she could help, couldn’t look the other way.

So ok, maybe _only half_ of it is self-torturing and punishing herself for ever allowing herself to be happy again.

*

The day Meredith successfully performs Megan Hunt’s abdominal wall transplant, he hears about it first from Bailey, who catches up to him in the parking lot.

“Karev!” she calls out to him, and he stops to wait for her. She’s bouncing off her feet from the excitement, and she has a big smile on her face, almost smug. “Megan Hunt’s surgery was an unprecedented success!”

“You sound like you’re the one who did it” he tells her, and he regrets it immediately. There’s a reason you never snap at Bailey, and that’s because there’s usually consequences.

She halts, squaring her shoulders and tilting her chin up, ready for a fight. “Easy, Karev. My good mood is not as forgiving as you would think.”

Alex bows his head, taking the scolding as gracefully as he can. When he looks back up, Bailey’s gaze has softened.

“What is Grey saying about it? Is she satisfied?”

“I have no idea, I haven’t talked to her today. I guess I’ll find out once I get home” he’s quick to provide, wanting to get out of the conversation as fast as possible, especially when, at his last word, Bailey breaks out in a fully smug smirk, and he kicks himself for giving her anything to latch on to. “Oh come on, stop that” he groans, but that only seems to spur Bailey even more.

“Stop what?” she gloats, swaying a little on her feet, her handbag knocking against his knees. “I was just asking you a simple question.”

“Just because you know things, it doesn’t mean you get to lord them over me whenever you feel like it.”

“I’m doing no such thing, Karev. What I’m doing, however,” she says, still grinning, staring him down, “is going home now. _Home_ ” she stresses the word, “the place where I live. _With the man that I love._ ”

He has no idea how he’s supposed to answer to that, so he just stands there, dumbstruck, as Bailey walks away, giggling openly. She’s a few feet away when she turns again, offers him a last knowing smile. “You should go _home_ too, Karev.”

*

Meredith’s car is in the driveway, the lights on in the living room. Alex opens the front door, expecting celebrations, wine, music, and probably one of those absurd dance parties Meredith still insists on from time to time.

But instead, he opens the front door and Maggie rushes to him, Zola in tow, worry etched all over both their faces, and something about that does not compute.

“Hey, what’s going on? I thoug-” there’s a loud crashing sound coming from upstairs, stomping of feet, a door slamming shut. Something about it just screams _disaster_ and that, paired with Maggie’s expression, immediately puts him on high alert.

_Oh god, Now what._

“What happened?”

“I have no idea!” Maggie cries out in a flurry of waving hands and bouncing curls, “She came home and locked herself in her room, and now she’s started throwing things!”

“And she hasn’t said anything?”

“No! I thought you would know what to do” she’s looking at him, hopeful, and the only thing he can do is let out a big exhale, dropping his bag right there on the foyer.

“Alright” he sighs, and he can see Maggie visibly lighten up, a shaky smile stretching at her lips. At least he averted _one_ crisis. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He makes his way upstairs slowly, trying to think of a game plan as he goes.

But, a game plan for what? This is not how he thought the night was going to go. She did something incredible today, they were supposed to be celebrating.

“Meredith?” he knocks once.There’s a beat of silence, followed by something being thrown with force at the door from the other side of it. The wood rattles, and he takes a step back, startled. Ok, this is going to be interesting.

“Mer. Let me in.”

“Go away!” she shouts, and all his senses go on high alert at the sound of her voice. It sounds rough, throaty, and it’s not hard to figure out she’s been crying.

“Mer” he tries again, and this time he’s more stern, forceful. He is not going to let her do this anymore, retreat into her cave and refuse to share her burdens. “You either open this door, or I’m kicking it in. And I’m not even helping you putting it back together after.”

Alex hears footsteps on the other side, and a moment after the lock clicks. She doesn’t open the door, though, and it takes him a second to realize he can just go in now. He turns the handle slowly, bracing himself for what he’ll find inside.

There used to be three framed pictures on the wall above the headboard, and now they’re all gone, glass everywhere. The little wooden boxes that usually sit on the dresser have been thrown around the room, the laundry basket capsized, its contents spilling across the floor. 

At the other end of all this chaos stands Meredith, her back against the far corner of the room, looking at him with eyes of fire. Heaving chest, flushed cheeks, disheveled hair. She reminds him of how she looked the night Blake showed up at her house, but for some reason recognizing the problem doesn’t offer him any sort of relief. This is still a disaster.

“What happened? I thought the surgery went well, did she have complications? Wha-”

“Nothing went wrong, Megan’s f- she’s fine” Meredith says, tone more even than he’d imagined it would be. But she’s pointedly avoiding his eyes, her stare fixed on a spot somewhere behind him. Alex takes a step forward into the room carefully, and closes the door behind him.

“Then what?”

“Nothing went wrong” she says again, but something inside her is starting to crumble, he can tell by the way her leg is bouncing nervously and her voice cracks on the last word. When she speaks again, her eyes are swelling up with tears and every word struggles to come out.

“Just… She- she told him to- oh god” she breaks with a loud sob, her eyes flickering to meet his, and there’s too much in them, too much for her to keep it all in.

Her hands fly up to her sides, trying to hold herself up as she doubles over, shoulders wrecked by sobs that won’t let her catch her breath.

It’s a split second decision, the moment he throws away every single boundary he made for himself in the past six months, all the reasons he had for keeping his distance, for never getting too close.

In two quick strikes he’s at her side, putting his hands on her shoulders to pull her upright. The sudden contact seems to jolt her back to reality for a second, and she just collapses onto him, flinging her arms around his neck, face buried in the space just above his collarbone.

He’s startled into a halt, having expected her to push him away, yell again, or maybe even hardening up against his gesture, telling him she’s _fine_ , that she doesn’t need him to be there. But the seconds pass, and it’s clear that is not what this is about: she’s opened up the floodgates, and with every shake of her shoulders he can feel his shirt getting damper, and her body weighing more heavily on him. 

She’s clearly exhausted, from the long surgery, the long hours of research and practice, the psychological strain of it all. She played the tough guy act, pretending nothing about the case was affecting her, brushing off anyone that tried to reason with her or offered help.

If he were a lesser man he’d be singing _I told you so_ right now.

From the way she’s still hiding her face into his shirt, he understands that she doesn’t actually want him to comment on any of it, so he says nothing, just walks them back to the bed and breaks her fall when they tumble onto it. It’s an awkward position, laying sideways on the mattress, their legs hanging off bed, her body resting uncomfortably on top of him. She still has her arms around his neck. 

For some reason, he is still weary of touching her, his arms laying on either side of his body. He doesn’t want to break another one of his self-imposed rules, knows he shouldn’t let himself reach out for her or he’ll end up thinking of literally nothing else for the next week. _That makes absolutely no sense_ , a voice inside of him tries to reason, there’s not much difference in him hugging her back or not when they’re already entangled like this anyway. The damage has already been done, he’s not getting this image out of his head now no matter what.

He raises the arm that is not crushed under her body, and drops it carefully between her shoulder blades. He strokes up and down her back once, slowly, and she makes a faint sound, a pained whine that vibrates against his neck. Alex feels her body relax, and he takes that as the first good sign she’s maybe calming down. He curls his hand up in a fist, and resumes in stroking her back, the knuckles applying more pressure than his open palm.

He has to fight hard with his own body, because for every second Meredith relaxes he’s getting increasingly more tightly wound, all sorts of scenarios popping up in his brain that he is _not_ going to indulge in, not right now. Not when she’s like this, and his priority should be her peace of mind, and not his poor impulse control.

Alex’s not sure how long they stay like that, in the quiet bubble of her room, the only sounds the friction of his hand against the fabric of her sweater and her heavy breathing, slowly starting to wind down. Her body feels heavier on top of his now, and he’s afraid she might be starting to fall asleep.

“Mer” he nudges her, whispering into the crown of her head, “maybe you should get into bed properly.”

She pushes herself up too quickly for someone who’s been asleep, eyes alert even through the tears still filling them. She gives him a long, silent look before nodding, pushing herself completely off of him. He feels the blood immediately rush back to the parts of his body that were starting to fall asleep because of her weight, but he also feels cold, and he almost extends his hand to pull her back down with him.

“I’m gonna go” he sits up on the bed when his body stops tingling, “I’ll leave you some space to-”

“No” she interrupts him in a haste, worry flashing behind her eyes, “please stay.”

So he stays. He waits until she’s done in the bathroom, and when she re-emerges he scoots over to give her space to get in bed. He’s ready to go back to his side of the mattress, adamant on resuming his self-imposed rules now that the crisis has officially been averted: he’ll stay, but he’ll keep to himself. He’ll be close by if she needs him during the night, but keeping his distance in the hope that maybe he can push the feelings of this night back down.

But Meredith shuts off the lights, and a second later he can feel her hand grab at his wrist in the darkness. She’s pulling, almost desperate, and he’s so glad he can’t see her face because he’s not sure his heart could handle it. He just lets his body follow her directions, and she pulls at him until his arm is wrapped around her frame, their intertwined hands resting on her stomach. She’s laying on her side, her back to him, and can feel her hair tickling his jaw. 

They’re too close, he keeps thinking, he’s not used to the position and this is crazy, the fact that they’ve been sharing a bed for… he can’t even remember how long anymore, and still this feels like some sort of line they’re not supposed to cross, a line _he_ is not supposed to cross.

She must sense his doubts, because she just shimmies under the covers, scoots back until she’s flush against him, holding tightly at his hand. Alex tenses up, wants to pull back.

He can’t. His body isn’t responding properly anymore.

“Mer...” he chokes, a whisper in the dark. He’s not even sure he knows what he wants to say to her.

_What is this?_

_Are you sure you won’t feel awkward in the morning?_

_...Do you know I love you?_

“Please, don’t.” She’s serious, even when it comes out barely a whisper, he can tell even without seeing her. “Please, just…” she softens, now she’s vulnerable, “please.”

So he doesn’t pull back. And that’s the problem, really, the fact that he can’t ever seem to be able to tell her no. Once, ten years ago, she asked him to _please be less of a jerk_ and he has never been stopped listening to her since.

He has a fleeting thought that he feels so wired up that he’s sure he won’t be able to fall asleep for hours, but suddenly it’s morning, the alarm clock goes off, and he opens his eyes to find her still there. She’s still in his arms, his face pushed into her hair, their fingers entangled together against her stomach.

Neither of them has moved an inch the entire night. The realization terrifies him.

Meredith stirs against him, groaning at the offending sound of the alarm, pushing herself off him to stretch. When she turns on her back she looks over to him, eyes barely open and clearly still puffy from last night. But she’s smiling softly, and this is the first time in weeks he’s seen her actually look relaxed in the morning.

“Good morning” she croaks, yawning, and she squeezes his hand quickly before she jumps off the bed, ready to start her day. She doesn’t spare him another look.

He lays there, not sure he can even move.

*

Riggs and Hunt’s sister leave, apparently for good, but Meredith doesn’t seem too bothered by it when anyone mentions it, she doesn’t get that sad look in her eyes anymore. Alex figures things are slowly getting back to normal, even if after that night, she’s not able to fall asleep if he’s not there for her to cling on to. In the privacy of his mind, there’s still fireworks blowing up every time she reaches across the bed for him.

It seems to be the only thing in her life that she finds any sort of peace into, because everything else sets her off, to the point that when he walks past the residents’ lounge, he overhears some fifth years instructing younger doctors on what _Medusa_ used to mean a long time ago.

Even the other attendings seem to have noticed, sharing knowing glances every time they pass her in the lounge, or even in the OR. They all know Meredith and what she’s like, so they are not really surprised, and they also know better than to try and talk to her about it. 

One time, Meredith blows up at one of the new interns until she almost makes the new girl cry in the middle of the ER. Alex happens to be sitting at the intake desk in that moment, and Kepner starts throwing small objects at him until he has to turns to her, annoyed. She has a bewildered look on her face, and she keeps pointing at Meredith from behind the desk, the question in her eyes clear. They’ve all been hoping he’d have more information than the rest of them, and he’s not sure how he’s supposed to react to that.

Because he does, and at the same time he doesn’t.

He and Maggie are stuck in this weird limbo where she is impossible to be around at work, and absolutely perfectly fine the second she walks through the front door of the house. He’s still not sure what’s going on inside her head, and she’s been keeping him at enough of a distance that he hasn’t been able to get an answer for any of the sparse questions he has been trying to throw at her.

So he just shrugs at Kepner, and goes back to his charts. He can hear the other woman breathe out a disbelieving gasp of outrage at his reaction, which only earns her one of his satisfied grins.

*

“Evil Spawn, as I live and breathe.”

“Hello, Yang.”

“You do know that every time you call me it’s to tell me someone is gravely injured and in a hospital bed, right? This has got to stop, Karev.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Seriously, I see your name on the screen and my heart stops for a second. And not in the warm and fuzzy kind of way.”

“Would you just quit it? No one is dying.”

She laughs at him on the other end of the line, and the sound of that feels so familiar it tugs at his heartstrings just a little. He feels like he’s back in the tunnels and O’Malley has just said something nerdy they are all making fun of him for.

Or, she’s making fun of _him_ for turning down the Hopkins’ fellowship, and he’s back to being annoyed in a heartbeat. _Annoying_ , she is annoying, and this phone call is already lasting too long.

“Listen” he tries to bring her back to his original reason for calling, “I have twin kids with the same cardiomyopathy symptoms as your siblings from your last case here. I wanted to pick your brain about something.”

“Well, I am glad you called, but I am not sure I can help you with any of that. Pierce is the one that solved it, not me. I had already left.”

“Yes, I remember, but this is a little different, and Maggie suggested I’d give you a call anyway.”

They spend about an hour on the phone together, going over every piece of information, tests, labs, medical history he could get his hands on. Cristina is precise, laser focused even over the phone, brilliant as ever. 

He wouldn’t admit it even under torture, but he misses her terribly. 

“Alright, give that a go, I think it might lead to something” she offers in the end, and with that the work portion of the call is officially over. He groans internally, bracing himself for the inevitable ribbing he knows is coming. 

“If it ends up being surgical, you should ask McKiwi to scrub in too, I hear he’s not half-bad in cardio.”

“Who?” he asks, because this McNickname thing was exhausting to him even a decade ago, and the older he gets the less patience he has for it. 

“Riggs” she offers flatly, annoyed by him not playing along, “by the way, I can’t believe I still don’t know your opinion on him.”

“What do you need my opinion for? Aren’t Meredith’s and Hunt’s enough for you?” he snarls, Riggs name eliciting the usual feelings of annoyance in him, and he’s glad Cristina never had Meredith’s sense for seeing through his crap, or he’d already be dead and at her mercy. 

“Because they are too polarizing, the both of them. Owen will never be able to be objective, and Mer, god help us, has had heart eyes so big for the past six months it’s a miracle she’s not bumping into every corner she turns.”

He laughs darkly at that, and he blames it on the easiness of their banter when he misses the very obvious first red flag in this conversation. 

“You know” she continues, “I’ve never given you enough credit for having the guts to live with her when she was being all lovey-dovey with Derek back then, but to be doing it again… you really have some guts, Karev.”

He ignores the surge of jealousy in his chest, his brain finally connecting what’s weird about the way Cristina’s talking.

Meredith hasn’t had heart eyes about anyone or anything for at least two months. What is she talking about? 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she told me she was thinking of bringing him home soon, and that was a while ago so, even by Mer’s standards, that should have happened by now.”

The realization leaves him jaw-slacked and unable to speak for a second, he’s lucky that Cristina’s attention is grabbed for a second by someone who must have walked into her room, giving him time to gather his thoughts. 

For some reason, Cristina still thinks Riggs and Meredith are still together. 

Meredith hasn’t told her Riggs left.

“Hey Alex, I’m sorry”, Cristina is back on the line, pulling him out of his own head, “I have to go. But I’m in Vancouver next week, maybe we can talk again when we are on the same time zone?”

“Yeah, sure, don’t worry. Thanks again.”

They both hang up, and Alex is left staring at the wall in front of him, unable to move just yet. 

_What just happened?_

*

He finds Meredith in the cafeteria, eating lunch alone and scrolling through her phone mindlessly. She doesn’t seem to have noticed the gaggle of interns sat just a few tables away, clearly staring at her with reverence and the tiniest bit of terror. He hears one of them loudly gasp when he approaches her table and sits down, and shoots them back a warning glare before turning back to her. 

He gets it, though, being an intern who is just starting out, you see attendings as untouchable figures, like they’re perfect and like they’ve got their act completely together. He remembers looking at Bailey, Webber, Arizona, even Hunt sometimes, and feeling the same.

He wants to tell them that over time the feeling goes away, and you become an attending just in time to realize your life is still as messed up as it was before.

“Hey” Meredith smiles at him, and puts down her phone. For a second he gets lost in the way she’s looking at him and forgets why he came to talk to her in the first place.

_Oh, right._

“I talked to Cristina today” he says, casually, leaning back on his chair and tearing his gaze away, trying to sound casual.

“Oh, really?” she tries too hard to sound casual too, and from her tone he immediately knows she’s full of crap and she knows it, doing a half-assed job at covering it up, too.

“Yeah, it seemed like you two haven’t talked in a while.”

“That’s not true, I wrote her an email last Wednesday.”

“Where you told her Riggs moved away and you’re not together anymore, I am sure.”

She snaps her head to look at him, and he raises her gaze until they are looking at each other. He holds her stare, her eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights. He is somewhat aware that the interns are still looking, and he doesn’t want to make a scene in public but he really needs to know what the hell is going on.

“Did you tell her?” she asks quietly, almost a whisper, and her face falls to that sad look he’s gotten used to see on her when no one else is around. He wants to reach out and hold her hand, but doesn’t.

“Of course I didn’t. I am not getting in the middle of a thing between the two of you, I am not an idiot.” That makes her smile faintly, and he feels cautiously optimistic about the direction of this conversation.

“I am going to tell her.”

“I know.”

“I just don’t know how to say it. She’s going to have questions, and opinions, and I haven’t been ready for that just yet.”

“She wanted to know _my_ opinion. About Riggs.”

She laughs again when he scrunches up his nose in mock-annoyance, and the sound of that makes him feel lighter, the weight he didn’t know he was carrying gone. He steals her fork from her hand to have a bite out of her lunch. She doesn’t protest much, instead she studies him for a long moment while he chews on the food.

“What would you have told her?”

He’s not that surprised by the question, but there is something in the way she asks it that tells him he should be cautious. Which of course he isn’t.

“You know what I think, I would have told her that.”

“That you didn’t like him” she states, not even a question. She knew his answer already.

He rests the hand holding the fork on the tray, almost bracing himself, and exhales a deep sigh before speaking again. “Look Mer, I never lied to you about that. I didn’t like the guy. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy for you, or that I thought he wasn’t the right fit for you.”

He’s not sure why what he says is wrong, but it apparently is. She gives him a long pointed look before scoffing, and grabs her fork back from him with force, furiously stabbing at her food without sparing another look at him.

“Mer, what?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t _nothing_ me, what did I do?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Alex” she tells him, voice hard. There’s a beat of silence between them where they just stare at each other, and Alex can’t recognise the look in her eyes. When she gets up, her chair scrapes against the floor as she walks away, not sparing him a second glance, leaving him dumbstruck in the middle of the cafeteria.

The interns are whispering loudly again, and a surge of anger curses through him. Alex stands too, slowly, and adjusts his lab coat before walking over to them, terror immediately spreading on their faces.

“When I was an intern” he says, in a voice he doesn’t have to try to make it sound menacing, “I did not have all this time for a lunch break. Lucky you.”

He watches them stand at the speed of light, a mess of chairs dragged on the floor and half eaten food left on the trays when they all rush for the door, stumbling onto each other, while he smirks at the little victory.

She’s not the only one they should be afraid of. 

*

She wins the Harper Avery. Because really, how could she not.

Alex finds her outside the OR’s scrub room, champagne bottle already in hand. She stops just outside the door, people crowding in the hallway and cornering her, to offer one last handshake, one last _congratulations._ She gets distracted by it, smiles to everyone, hugs both Bailey and Webber before she turns back around, looking for him in the crowd. When she finally sees him, someone else comes up to her again and she can only offer him a silent apologetic look, that Alex brushes off with an understanding nod.

It’s alright, he can wait.

Zola comes running toward him in her little dress and cardigan, yelling his name excitedly, Maggie not far behind. The girl shouldn’t be back here, she’s obviously not allowed on the surgical floor, but Alex forgets about that for a second, catches her mid air when she tries to jump on him, making a big show of lifting her up by the armpits and plopping her back on his shoulders. At least this way she’s not running around to places she shouldn’t be in.

It’s another ten minutes at least before Meredith manages to free herself from the crowd. People are starting to disperse and go back to their jobs, and Alex and Maggie take their chance trying to approach her, Zola still bouncing excitedly on his shoulders, her feet kicking his chest.

“Mom! Mommy, you won!” Zola shrieks, and Meredith turns around at the sound of her daughter’s voice, lighting up when she sees them.

“I did!” Meredith’s tone matches Zola’s, the girl’s excitement clearly rubbing off on her. She wraps her hand around Zola’s ankle, tugging gently, and Zola wiggles on top of Alex until he gets the message and lowers her back onto the ground. Zola runs over to her mother, immediately burying her face into Meredith’s stomach.

Meredith laughs happily, running her hand over Zola’s hair and glancing over at Alex and Maggie. Her eyes seem to linger a little longer on Alex, her gaze softening to a quiet content expression. Alex’s heart does tiny pirouettes and he’s bursting with pride and affection.

His best friends won an Harper Avery

“Alright” Maggie pipes up, and it’s clear from the way she’s looking at them that the look they’ve been sharing has been going on for longer than they both realize, “what do you say Zola and I head back home, and the two of you can catch up with us later?”

Zola puts up a bit of a fight, but Meredith hugs her tightly and promises they’ll spend the day together tomorrow, and eventually the girl takes her aunt’s hand and they both skip down the hallway, laughing the whole way until they disappear behind a corner. 

Alex looks around them, the floor now completely empty, everyone had already left when they saw her talking with her family. When he looks back at Meredith, she’s smirking at him, head cocked to the side in a teasing way.

“What are we gonna drink that out of?” she asks, nodding to the bottle in his hand, the question echoing in the deserted hallway. 

Trying to match her teasing, cocky attitude, Alex takes a few steps forward until he’s right in front of her. Silently, he produces two paper coffee cups he stole from the cafeteria from his lab coat’s pocket. She bursts out laughing, and he breaks too, can feel a wide grin spreading across his face.

“Are you gonna take me somewhere nice?” she asks, and it sounds almost flirty, giddy as she is with happiness. He’s not reading anything into it, he decides.

“The best spot in this entire place” he tells her, playing at her game, hooking his arm under hers, dragging her down the hallway.

The tunnels are still as he remembers them, and for some reason completely different. He hasn’t been down here in years, but the brick walls, the color of the mattresses on the gurneys, it all looks exactly the same, and for a second it feels like he’s never left. It’s like when you go back to a place you used to go to as kid, and everything feels smaller and somehow still perfectly familiar. 

There are interns sitting on the gurneys, and they unceremoniously shoo them away before plopping down in their place. He pops the cork on the bottle of champagne, screams in Meredith’s ear when she refuses to put Cristina on speaker. 

Everything about this night feels perfect, the perfect celebration for her lifetime’s achievement. Alex thinks about the fact that she was supposed to go to Boston and actually accept the award, and that if she had they wouldn’t be celebrating together right now: she’d be in some nameless hotel, and he’d have to wait his turn until she was done talking to Yang before he could even think of getting a phone call. He spent the day pushing her into not missing her flight, but now that they’re here, all things considered, he’s completely fine with how things turned out.

The rest of the night is easy, fun, simple. They joke around, finishing the whole bottle of champagne maybe a little too quickly, and as much as she likes to brag, Meredith _cannot_ hold her alcohol. She sways dangerously with every movement, and Alex makes fun of her like he always does, and if he thinks she’s looking adorable he doesn’t say it out loud.

They allow themselves to reminisce about the past, which they never do, because sometimes it hurts too much to remember you’re the last one standing in the long list of people that used to make up your life. Tonight feels like the right time though, because it was a good day, where she won awards and they saved their friends’ copycats and absolutely nothing went wrong. It was a good day.

“Remember this morning?” she asks him, out of the blue. They’ve gotten more comfortable on the beds, her head resting on his shoulder while he plays with the label on the champagne bottle. “On the ferry, I said Derek was jealous I got nominated when he didn’t.”

“Sure” he offers, his senses on high alert, trying to figure out just from her tone of voice where this is going. He can never really tell, when she’s talking about Derek.

“I think he’d be even more mad now” she blurts out, the end of the sentence lost in a fit of giggles, and Alex relaxes again. She’s buzzed enough from the champagne that she’s managing to make jokes, there’s none of the usual dark thoughts that come up sometimes. After all, this was a good day.

“I miss Lexie, and Mark” she sighs. She’s grown somber now, but she still sounds positive, remembering the people in her life doesn’t hurt tonight. Maybe that’s one of the benefits of alcohol. “And _George_ , George would have been so happy about this.”

Alex doesn’t answer, doesn’t really know how. He abandons the bottle, and his fidgeting hands somehow find Meredith’s, their fingers intertwining on her lap. They are silent for a long time, Alex’s mind too focused on the way Meredith’s thumb is rubbing over his knuckles to really register anything else. His brain fog is starting to clear a little, and now he’s more aware of where they are, what they’re doing.

He’s almost sure no one even knows about this place, they’re the only ones who used to come down here, and they haven’t done that in almost a decade now. He doubts anyone, not even Bailey or Webber, would think to come look for them here. Anything could happen right now, and it would never leave this hall, they’d be the only ones to know about it.

When Meredith speaks again, he barely hears it, it’s more like he feels her breath warm against his collarbone.

“You know what, out of everyone I’m so glad you’re the one that’s here with me tonight” she giggles quietly, and this time he laughs with her.

“Yeah, I’m really glad too.” Saying it is easy, because it’s not a lie: as complicated his feelings for her have gotten lately, there’s nothing complicated about being her friend, about being happy for her, celebrating her accomplishments. It’s the most natural thing he’s felt in months.

Meredith untangles herself from him clumsily, he has to hold her up a little when she tries to sit up straight, and he immediately misses her warmth, but she doesn’t go far. She stays on the gurney besides him, just turning to face him better, her face growing serious in kind of a drunkish way. Alex tries to stifle a laugh.

“Alex” she starts, “I just wanted to say- lately I’ve been feeling like I need to… I just wanted to say thank you” she stumbles over her words, brow furrowing in an effort to get to the right ones.

“For what?”

“For being here. You still haven’t left” she tells him, staring down at him, all of a sudden looking completely sober. Alex’s heart skips a beat, and he has to force himself to stay calm, not to read anything into this. Meredith’s bursts of affection are nothing new, this doesn’t mean what he thinks it means. Nevertheless, he can feel himself losing his cool.

“You know I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know, I know, but- no one ever _means_ to leave, that’s not the problem. I’m just- I’m grateful you are here _now_ , that’s all.”

Alex’s stunned into silence. His heart is beating faster than normal, her words still ringing in his ears. Every muscle in his body is itching to reach out and touch her, hold her and not let her go, but he knows he can’t, not now and not like this. _Not ever_ , he keeps telling himself, but that is proving more difficult day after day and he’s starting to realize he’s not really sure how long he can go on like this for. He slips, makes the mistake to let his eyes fall to her lips.

His heart almost gives out when he sees hers do the same.

The moment seems to stretch for hours.

The echoing of feet and voices coming from the stairwell shakes them out of whatever trance they’ve found themselves into. Alex tears his eyes away from Meredith, and that’s at the same time painful and like coming up for air. He feels like he’s stopped breathing for several minutes.

“We found you!” Arizona stumbles through the door, grinning happily, Kepner and Hunt in tow. They all start talking at the same time, crowding Meredith and chatting away about the award, blissfully unaware of what just happened, what _could_ have happened.

Meredith recovers in record time, her still stunned face morphing immediately into a happy smile, tearing her focus from Alex and directing it to Kepner’s excited questions. Alex forces a smile too, giving himself a minute to collect himself before jumping into the conversation with the others. He shouts at Avery over speakerphone when they call him to join in on the party, drinks some more champagne Hunt brought down with them. Slowly, his nerves start to settle, and he can enjoy the rest of the night like he was doing at the start of it.

The others don’t notice, but at some point Meredith’s eyes meet his and he’s the only one that can see the tiny flash of guilt going through them.

*

Avery was right, Tom Koracick should not be allowed to set foot into this hospital, ever.

He struts in, all confident and cocky and borderline inappropriate, and Alex has to physically hold himself from punching the guy clean in the mouth. Amelia seems to find him amusing, DeLuca looks a little scared, and he just wants to leave the room every time the guy walk into the lab.

This is pretty much how he has been spending his weeks lately, going between all his other patients and Kimmie’s room every free second he has. Alex’s worried about her, worried their approach might not work, and he can’t seem to shake the feeling off long enough to give himself a break. 

Everyone else seems to have noticed his mood, because Maggie lets him sit shotgun on their way home from the hospital, and one night he comes home to find Bailey and Zola, covered in flour, presenting him with a cake they baked to, in their own words, _make him smile again_ , which he finds adorable and actually manages to lift the heavy cloud that seems to be hanging over his head everywhere he goes.

The day Kimmy tries to sign herself out and he barely convinces her to stay, Alex spends an hour drinking alone at Joe’s before he can even begin to think about going home. He’s pissed and he feels powerless, and no amount of reassurance from Amelia managed to convince him that it’s not his fault that they couldn’t fix it. Because it is his fault. The girl trusted him to work out a solution, and he couldn’t, and he’s not sure he knows how to tell her.

He nurses his beer at the bar, sulking, and he gets distracted by the noise coming from the corner where the darts boards are: Kepner surrounded by screaming interns, drunk dancing on top of one of the booths. The scene feels so out of place and _odd,_ that it gives him all the motivation he needed to push himself off the bar stool and finally head home.

He’ll be damned if he’ll ever cope with his crap the same way April Kepner does.

The house should be dark and quiet at this hour, but he can see the lights on in the kitchen. “Hey” he calls for whoever might still be up when he comes in, dropping his things by the door.

“Hey” Meredith calls back, appearing at the end of the hallwayway, coming out of the kitchen, “you’re back. Have you eaten yet?” He shrugs and follows her when she stalks back into the kitchen, and he feels like he has walked right into 2006 again.

“What the hell is happening?”

“I am baking” she says effortlessly, whipping her head back to look at him with a smile, “I felt like baking.”

There’s the biggest bag of flour he’s ever seen in the middle of the kitchen island, half the counter covered in muffin tins and sheet pans. The ceiling lights are turned off, and the only light is coming from the oven and the led strips Alex hang under the cabinets a couple years ago, when one of Meredith and Amelia’s usual arguments resulted in them renovating the entire place.

“Did you hit your head and forgot you _can’t_ bake?”

“Shut up” she laughs, and throws him a muffin, “tomorrow is Sunday and I thought that it would be nice for once if you didn’t have to do all the cooking.”

He hums, grateful, stares down at the muffin in his hand, and for a second he gets distracted by the fact that it doesn’t feel or smell half-bad at all, before he remembers there is still something inherently worrying about Meredith cooking, or even worse, _baking._

“Mer, what is going on?”

“Nothing is going on, I just wanted to bake” she tells him, but there’s just the slightest hint of manic energy in her voice that tells him he is on the right track, she’s trying too hard to be cheery and it feels wrong. “Sit there, eat the muffin. You look like death.”

“I know, rough day” he sighs, taking a bite out of the muffin. He briefly wonders if the fact that it is actually edible should be counted as a bad or as a good thing.

“Is it Kimmie?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No, I’m okay” he smiles faintly, and after a brief nod she goes back to mixing batter into the big stainless steel bowl in front of her.

They sit together in comfortable silence, and he takes the opportunity to study her without having to police himself, like he’s learned to do when he’s in front of other people lately: he’s had enough of Bailey’s knowing looks at the end of every attendings’ meeting. 

She put her hair up in a ponytail, but there are shorter strands of it escaping the hair tie, which she tries to push back with her forearm a couple of times. She’s wearing sweats and a green hoodie, and it takes him a second to realize that it’s _his_ green hoodie, the one he thought he lost but now remembers giving to Zola one time that they went out for ice cream and the girl was cold. Apparently, Meredith took it for herself and never gave it back.

She looks just like any regular mother, cooking late at night in a dimly lit kitchen, loungewear and relaxed features softening her appearance. 

Except she’s not really relaxed, he can tell. She is constantly smiling, a little too brightly, her movements a little too quick and frantic, the wooden spoon scraping the bowl with a little too much force. Even Maggie, who is still learning how to read the signs of a spiraling Meredith, could see that there’s something not quite right with her from a mile away. Alex, who has seen her like this too many times by now, sees right through it in seconds.

He debates with himself whether he actually wants to say something, because this feels like one of those times where taking the lid off the box might actually mean unleashing a lot of ugly stuff he doesn’t know if he has the energy to deal with tonight. He is already tired, already pissed at the world, and he’s not sure starting this particular conversation would lead to any good.

But then again, he has never been the best at impulse control.

“You still haven’t called Cristina.”

He can see her physically wince and tense up at his words. She stops moving for a second, not even raising her head to spare him a look, before starting back on her batter, even more forceful than before.

“Mer, don’t ignore me” he warns her, and he can already feel the anger building up in his chest, and he wonders how long he can hold himself off before he starts losing it on her.

“I am not ignoring you, I am baking. I really don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t want you to _say_ anything, I want you to _do_ something!” he snaps. Apparently, it didn’t take long at all.

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean” Meredith says, in a tone that is supposed to sound calm but is doing a poor job at covering the fire under it. Her nostrils are flaring, and there is a very evident blush creeping up her neck. They are both getting too riled up over what should be a normal conversation, and there is no way this will end well. 

He just can’t help himself.

“You are acting like nothing around you ever bothers you, and like everything does at the same time. You lash out at interns, you won’t talk to Cristina because you say you’re not ready for her opinions, but you won’t allow anyone else’s either.”

She still isn’t looking at him, growing red in the face, and the alcohol in his body probably doesn’t help in phrasing the issue as well as he would like. “It’s been six months Mer, you have got to do something about this at some point.”

“You think this is all about Nathan?” she says, dropping the spoon, the clanking sound reverberating through the kitchen, her voice seething with rage. “That he’s been all I’ve had on my mind for months and that’s the only reason why I’m miserable?”

“I don’t know why you’re miserable” he suddenly feels bad for making her angry, and tries to climb back down from the tense place they’ve both worked up themselves into. “Tell me.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

The absurdity of the statement offends him so much that he scoffs loudly, and she snaps her head up to meet his eyes. They are both pissed at each other now, and there is no way he is going to be able to go back to being reasonable.

“I don’t want to hear it? Are you kidding me?”

“I don’t know how to talk to you about it.”

“We literally sleep in the same bed every night” he spits out, sarcastic, “I haven’t had a room of my own here for almost a year” he reminds her, annoyed. This is the first time either of them ever acknowledged their sleeping arrangement out loud, and he can see in her eyes the flash of panic at being confronted with the odd, confusing reality of it. She knows too that is not how normal friends live. “There have been plenty of ways for you to tell me.”

“That is not the point, the point is I don’t think you would understand.”

“Ok, fine, more reason to talk to Cristina then” he tries not to sound too offended by that, and he’s sure he does a terrible job with it.

“She wouldn’t either.”

“Then you have to tell me what the hell it is that you need from us, Mer, because we can’t help you if you don’t. And I know you know this is not normal.”

Now it’s her turn to scoff, as she averts her eyes from him and shrugs like she’s fed up with the conversation, with him.

“What do you need, Mer?” He hates this, hates that she gets to shut him out and tell him nothing about herself, that she apparently feels like she can’t turn to him for help. He can accept that she might need time to think things over for herself, but he hates that she doesn’t trust him enough to lean into him when he offers.

She is still not looking at him, but the facade is slowly beginning to crumble. When the nervous energy and the rage finally build up enough that she can’t keep it in anymore, she steps away from the island, hands thrown around in the air, lower lip trembling. “I need my husband not to be dead!” she explodes, “I need my little sister not to be dead, and for the other one not to look at me like she’s wondering if I’m going to steal her boyfriend every time she falls in love. I need for my best friend to not be on the other side of the world while I-“

“I’m still here” he interrupts her, fiercely, the stool scraping across the floor when he stands up, taking strides to join her on the other side on the kitchen island. He’s done letting her assume he’s going to disappear like everyone else has. He won’t, not if he can help it, and he’s just now realizing he’s not sure she knows that.

She stops mid-sentence, mouth agape, and he can see guilt flash across her eyes. 

She thinks he’s offended at the _best friend across the world_ thing.

He is not, despite himself, mad about _that._

“I am sorry Alex” she runs her hand across her forehead, calmer now. She’s visibly deflated, her anger gone. “I mean- you know you are also my best friend, I just meant-“

“I know what you meant, Mer” he interrupts her again, softer. “I’m just saying _I’m_ still here.” 

Alex takes a step forward, shoulders squared, chin raised, the defiant look in his eyes not quite gone yet. The heat and the anger have dissipated, but he can see from the way she’s holding herself that she’s still defensive, ready to fight back if she needs to again. If she still wants to play this game he is not going to back down that easy.

She is breathing heavy, recovering from her outburst, her cheeks are flushed pink and her blonde hair, albeit still held by the hair tie, is flying all over the place. Her chest is heaving visibly and still he can’t seem to take his eyes off of her face. He’s doing his best to hold her stare, but he slips and looks down at her lips, and then he can’t look back up anymore. 

She is silent again, but she is looking at him with wide, shiny eyes and the beast in his chest speaks for the first time, pressing hard against his ribcage. 

_Do it._ He can almost hear it, clear as day. _Do it._

 _Well, crap._

They both take a step forward at the exact same time, and they crash into each other, meeting right in the middle of what little space was separating them.

He’s kissing Meredith.

Even tho he was the one to actively take the step forward, his brain and body are having a hard time processing the situation. He stands still, not really moving, trying to wrap his head around the reality of it.

He has forgotten what is supposed to happen now.

She whimpers a little against him, out of surprise and what sounds like _relief_ , and the tiny sound is all it takes to kick his brain and entire body into gear again. 

He opens his mouth against hers, stepping forward into her space, forcing her to back up, until she ends up trapped between his body and the sink. She winds her arms around his neck to steady herself against the impact, and that makes it even easier for him to dip his head down and kiss her deeper, swiping his tongue across her lips, her mouth finally opening under his, her tongue peeking out to meet his.

They are as close as two people can be without occupying the same space, knees knocking, hips flush against each other, lips connecting, and yet he can still hear the beast in his chest yelling _more, more, more_ and he’s getting lightheaded from it, he and Meredith kissing and her snaking her hands into his hair, dragging her nails across his scalp in a way that is making him forget his entire life up until this point.

She’s kissing him back, hungry, and he wonders briefly, in a short moment of clarity, how could he have ever imagined and worried himself sick over the possibility of Meredith having kissed him already. Now that they’re here, and he has his lips on hers, their tongues dancing, he can’t even imagine having actually experienced this feeling and not being _sure_ of it. 

Now that he knows, he wants to yell at his past self that he is a fool with no idea of what he is actually missing.

He is brought back to reality by Meredith pulling at his hair, and his hands shoot up of their own accord and find themselves on her waist. He inches higher and higher, until the fabric of the sweatshirt she’s wearing ( _his_ sweatshirt, he reminds himself, and he can’t think about that right now or he’ll lose his mind) is bunched up enough that it just unfolds over his arms, and Alex’s now free to skate his hands over the plains of her bare back.

She moans in his mouth at the feeling, and the only thing he can do is to pull her closer, eliminating even the smallest pocket of air that might still be lingering between them. His brain, and the beast in his chest, still don’t think it’s enough, hands roaming her back, one of them resting higher between her shoulder blades, keeping her in place, impossible for her to move away from him; the other circles back to her waist.

He really wants to pace himself, savour the moment, possibly even _stop and consider what the hell they’re doing_ , but it doesn’t look like she wants to stop either, her hands roaming everywhere, up his back and into his hair, framing his face and keeping him there, _closer, closer, closer._

The hand at her waist is drawing circles there, lazy, and it’s almost strange, the way the gesture feels intimate and tender against all the heated, hurried passion of everything else. He draws it up slowly under the sweatshirt, dancing across her stomach, up her side, and he must have gone high enough because the knuckle of one finger brushes against the side of her breast.

It’s the tiniest touch, almost non existent, but she moans again at the contact, louder, her hips bucking forward, and that is the moment he loses all control over himself.

“ _Fuck_ ” he groans, hovering over her mouth just long enough for the word to get out before he is diving right back into her. The kiss turns hungry, frantic, both hands holding her at her waist just to keep her closer. He’s leaning forward and pushing her against the counter to the point that she’s almost bending backwards, and that’s still not enough, _it could be more._

He detaches himself from her, grinning at her surprised expression and her tiny squeal when he wraps his hands around the back of her thighs, pulling her up until he can unceremoniously deposit her on the counter. She has to lock her arms around his neck to keep her balance. It’s a weird, awkward new angle that puts them face to face now, and Meredith’s laughing, more amused than shocked, and Alex stops, confused, arms still around her body.

“What’s funny?”

“I just realized I have never heard you swear before, ever” she giggles happily, eyes shiny and lips swollen, and she looks so perfect he has to suppress a groan and the urge to crash into her again. Instead, he steps forward slowly, coming to stand between her legs, both hands resting high on her thighs, squeezing lightly.

“That’s the thing you want to focus on right now? Really?”

Meredith nods vigorously, the serious expression she tries to put on vanishing immediately in a fit of adorable giggles, and he just hopes she feels even half as happy as she looks right now. He drops his shoulders with a heavy exhale, and he steadies his voice as best as he can when he answers. 

“When Amber and Aaron were little, I tried not to swear because I didn’t want to set a bad example” he says, looking up and finding her studying him curiously. She flashes him a bright, encouraging smile that makes him blush a little, and Alex feels himself blushing as he continues, “...and then I started working in peds, and you can’t really swear around patients, and here there are children too, so... no swearing.”

“That’s it?”

“What did you want from me, a pledge to God or something?”

She laughs at his scruffy tone, before humming in understanding, snaking her hands back up his chest and on his shoulders in a way that’s making him shiver. “That might be the most sensible thing I have ever heard you say” she murmurs, breath hot against his cheek. She extends her arms over him, elbows at his shoulders and arms behind him, languid, stretching herself like a cat against him as she inches closer and closer.

It’s doing things to him, and so is the way she’s looking at him right now.

“I can be sensible” he whispers, and he thinks he can hear her say _sure_ against his mouth, their lips barely brushing when she doesn’t make a move to get closer than that. He slides his hands up her body until they’re at her waist again, two of his fingers slipping back under her sweatshirt and that’s all it takes for her to crash down on him, lips finding each other like magnets locking together.

It’s more languid this time, Meredith enjoying her position above him and taking her time exploring his mouth with hers. He draws lazy circles with his thumbs on either side of her and he thinks fleetingly that he’d be perfectly fine not doing anything else for the rest of his life.

The front door opens and closes with the sound of vibrating glass, and by the time Maggie has walked the ten steps from the foyer to the kitchen, Meredith disappears from his arms before Alex even realizes she’s gone. He goes back to his stool on the other side of the room, resting his chin in his hands to try and cover his beestung lips.

He is lightheaded and he feels like laughing. 

“Hey, you’re both hom- what is happening? Are you _baking_?”

Meredith’s back to her mixing bowl, her hair hanging like curtains over her face (he must have snapped the hair tie out of it at some point, because it’s no longer there). She is not looking at him, and he can’t read her face to guess what she’s thinking when she turns around to greet her sister and starts chatting like nothing happened. Alex tries to relax into the conversation too, but he can’t, because every time he looks over at Meredith she is very pointedly not looking at him, and all the giddiness from before is slowly starting to evaporate from his body. 

Two muffin and one beer each later, they eventually all retreat to their own rooms. Amelia and Hunt have apparently patched things up, for the umpteenth time, and Alex’s been taking advantage of having his room back as much as he can until he’ll inevitably have to give it up again. He changes into a sleeping shirt and pants quickly, and gets under the covers in a haze, his mind still floating back to what happened.

He and Meredith kissed. Like, for-real-this-time kissed.

And it was as good, _better_ than he ever imagined it could have been, and he’s not even mad that Maggie’s interruption cheated him out of anything else that might have happened. Because the second time she kissed him back, and it felt like it was what she wanted too. He tries to conjure up in his mind the image of Meredith perched on the kitchen counter, her hair falling like a curtain around them. Her eyes shining, and she’s smiling when she inches down and closer to his lips…

The house has gone quiet, and he hears her footsteps in the hallway before she even knocks on his door. With his eyes closed he’s still seeing Meredith, and when he opens them she’s there too, except she’s not smiling anymore.

“What happened tonight- it didn’t happen.”

She is staring at him, eyes hard, and he immediately knows she means it. He knows her too well to try and convince himself this is something he can change her mind on. The way she says it, how she holds his gaze long after the words have left her mouth: this is final.

_What happened tonight didn’t happen._

Ok, he can try and live with that, as much as her words crushed him. There’s something that feels more important and absolutely non-negotiable, though.

“Are we ok?”

“Yeah, we’re ok” she tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, and the way the door slams shut behind her makes his heart sink down to the bottom of his stomach.

Maybe he cannot live with this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... this happened.
> 
> i'm so proud of this chapter, the fight/kiss is probably my favourite thing I've written for this story. i know, i know I've said it before, but this time it's true lol
> 
> (fun fact: this chapter features the very first scene/bit of dialogue i ever wrote for this story, long before i even knew what the story was going to be. it's so fun to see what a 100 words idea turned out to be)
> 
> as always, if you wanna leave a comment or come find me on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com) you'll make me forever happy!


	8. (it has never ever been about me)

When Alex ratted her out to the Chief for the Alzheimer’s trial, Meredith eventually forgave him. Weirdly, it took everyone else a lot longer than it took her, but slowly things went back to normal. Not that he cared about anyone else, really, but he remembers that he couldn’t deal with the way Meredith used to look at him. 

He brought her along on a neonatal emergency case, once. In hindsight, he now realizes that it was nothing more than some twisted attempt to try and atone for his mistakes, but still. He had to try _something_.

They got capsized in the ambulance, thrown around for what felt like forever, and he remembers thinking, in a hazy panic, _great, now she’ll hate me again._

He feels like that now, too.

He kissed her and their whole world got turned upside down.

She’s going to hate him again.

*

Alex spends the night tossing and turning, replaying last night in his head: they way they were fighting and screaming at each other, who took the first step, the way her skin felt under his fingertips. When he falls asleep, he dreams of what would have happened if Maggie hadn’t walked in on them.

He wakes up in the middle of the night, breathless and sweaty, shirt sticking to his skin.

The next morning, because it’s Sunday, he can’t just hide in his room all day, avoiding her or hoping to get paged so that he has an excuse to get out of the house. He needs to get up, take a shower, and go downstairs to start on breakfast.

At some point after his charges were dropped and the trial didn’t go through, they had stopped doing the Waffle Sunday thing. It wasn’t like it had exhausted its purpose, but Alex thinks that perhaps it made Meredith uncomfortable, she didn’t want to be reminded of the reason they had come up with it in the first place. So they started doing it less and less, using emergency surgeries and the kids being away at sleepovers as excuses to postpone it more and more, until they eventually just stopped.

When Maggie’s mom came to stay with them, the kids told her about it, and she found it such a wonderful idea that the next weekend she had made all kinds of breakfast all by herself, completely unprompted, and insisted that they picked the tradition back up again. When Diane died, Meredith was desperate to do whatever might make Maggie feel a little bit better, and so Waffle Sundays were back on, just like that.

Alex gets into the kitchen, and the sight of it stops him in his tracks. It looks a mess, which in itself isn’t at all unusual. What makes him pause is the gigantic bag of flour still sitting on the kitchen island, and the muffin tins scattered everywhere. There’s a spot on the counter by the sink that has been cleared hastily, and he winces when he remembers why.

That’s where he pushed Meredith up on the counter, to kiss her more easily. 

Where she looked at him and smiled, before leaning down to kiss him again.

Alex knows, rationally, that it was not something he had just dreamed about, that it did actually happen, but being confronted with the physical evidence of it... that’s a whole different story. It sends jolts through his spine, then he also remembers when she came to find him after, and the jolts stop.

He shakes the memory out of his head, and gets to work. The house is quiet, early morning light coming through the window. He is careful not to make too much noise when he tidies up what was left over from last night, pushing away any lingering thoughts of Meredith, before starting on the actual breakfast.

He likes the quiet, and the semi-darkness of the kitchen, focusing on one task at a time, checking things off of the list as he goes. It feels like he’s in the OR, working through the steps of a surgery he’s done a million times before. He feels at ease, and in control, the familiar motions requiring enough precision that his mind doesn’t wander, but not keeping him from thinking, either.

He prepares the batter for the waffles, and while he does that he allows himself to analyze the events of last night. He really wasn’t planning on doing _that_ , when he came home. He won’t lie to himself: for the most part the idea of kissing Meredith has been the only thing he’s been able to think about for months now, but he’s not sure he would have actually been able to go through with it. Especially not like this.

They kissed. He goes over it again, trying to decide if at any point it looked like she didn't want it as much as him. He had been a little hasty, he can admit it, covering her with his mouth and body, lost in the moment, and maybe he misread the signs. Maybe she was just surprised because she didn’t expect it to happen, didn’t _want_ it to happen.

But she had moaned against him, and more than that she had _smiled_ , had struck up a conversation like nothing was happening, made fun of him and then _she_ had kissed him again.

Alex moves on to cutting up fruit and taking stuff out of the pantry, and he thinks of her standing in his doorway the night before: her face was somber, she had been wringing her fingers the way she always does when she’s fighting herself over something.

_What happened tonight, it didn’t happen_ , she said, eyes trained on him as she said it, like she really needed him to hear it. She wasn’t hiding from it, or running away, and because of that he didn’t find it in his heart to fight her on it. If she had been running, it would have been easier, he could have called her out on her crap and forced her to face the situation, because that’s just the thing they do for each other, always. But it wasn’t like that, she didn’t run, and if she changed her mind he can respect it, as much as it hurts to do it.

In between cabinet doors slamming, he hears light steps coming down the stairs, and he turns around to find Ellis in the doorway, still in her pajamas, curious eyes focused on him. She’s always the first one to wake up in the morning.

“Hey El, good morning” he smiles at her, “do you want to help me out with breakfast?”

The girl silently shakes her head _no_ , curls flying everywhere, and he laughs at the sight of it. “Want to sit on the counter and keep me company, then?” 

She thinks about it this time, and then she nods _yes_ , running toward him as fast as her legs can take her. Alex scoops her up and deposits her at the end of the counter, near the fridge, to minimize the risks of her falling over. He winks at her and makes to turn back to his work, but he feels her hands grabbing him by the arm. He faces her again, to see if she needs something, and she’s tugging at his arm, pulling him to her. Alex takes a step forward, and Ellis grabs his face, pulls him down to her to plant a wet, sloppy kiss on his cheek.

He pulls back a little stunned, but she’s grinning happily and it’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen. He smiles back at her, wide, and bops her nose with his finger. “Thank you very much for that, Ellis.”

He goes back to work, but now he feels much lighter, all his dark thoughts having dissipated in front of the little girl’s affection.

It’s another half hour before everyone else joins them downstairs. Maggie walks in with Zola and Bailey in each hand, the three of them already chatting non stop, even this early in the morning, Amelia following a while later. She clearly would have preferred to sleep in, but she knows Waffle Sundays call for the entire family, and she dragged herself out of bed anyway. Alex knows she won’t start interacting until at least her second cup of coffee, and he hands her the first one, nodding silently in understanding when she grunts out a _thank you_.

Meredith takes the longest to show up, as always. Unusual is the way Alex feels about it, jittery with the anticipation of seeing her again. For all the thinking he did last night, and this morning, he hasn’t really stopped to consider that they would have to see each other again at some point, and actually have to spend time with one another.

He can’t decide if doing it surrounded by other people will make it better, or worse.

So he busies himself, makes the waffles and starts a conversation with Amelia about Kimmie’s next options. The kids are all happily chatting away, and it all feels perfectly normal, to the point that he almost allows himself to relax.

_There’s nothing to worry about, this is fine._

“Good morning” Meredith’s quiet greeting catches him off guard, and his head whips up immediately, his eyes finding her in the loud cacophony of all her kids yelling excitedly at her, but she’s avoiding his gaze, giving her full attention to Bailey’s frankly impressive pile of waffles.

She’s still wearing his sweatshirt. He swallows heavily.

“Hey” Alex manages eventually, coming up short with anything better to say, “you want coffee?”

Meredith turns to him then, and she looks stern, like she did before bed last night, but there’s a glint of panic too, like she’s begging him for…. something. She’s asking him not to say anything, to pretend their whole world didn’t flip upside down.

_Yeah, Mer, I get it._

“Yes, thank you” she decides, her eyes softening, and she covers the short distance from the table to the island until they’re side by side. Alex can feel her gaze on him while he pours her a cup, and their eyes meet when he hands it to her.

All of this, the room and the chatter, him pouring her the coffee, everything is exactly as it has always been. From the outside, there is absolutely nothing worth noting, seemingly nothing has changed.

When really, it feels like literally everything has.

Thankfully Amelia and Maggie, at least, don’t seem to think so, because neither of them spares him or Meredith a second glance, focused on their food and on the kids.

“I am sorry” Meredith whispers, and it’s so quiet Alex thinks he has imagined it. He steals a glance at her, and she’s looking straight ahead, avoiding his eyes again. But she’s holding onto her cup too tight, and he knows she’s waiting for an answer.

“Sorry about what?”

“Alex…”

“Sorry about what, Mer?” he’s matching her whispered tone, and he goes to stand next to her, leaning on the counter as close as he thinks he can get away with without actually touching her. He’s not trying to make her feel uncomfortable, and he won’t try to force her to talk about it. She said to pretend like it never happen, and he will, if she wants to, but now she’s brought it up and he can’t just let her off the hook like this. 

“It shouldn’t have happened.”

In that _shouldn’t_ there’s everything he can’t seem to be able to shake off about the entire thing, and the way she says it makes him stand a little straighter, makes all his nerve endings buzz with excitement.

_Shouldn’t._ Like it shouldn’t have happened _like this_ , or at all? Because he can get behind at least one of those sentiments, if that’s what she needs him to do. All he has ever wanted was to be on the same side as Meredith. He hates when they disagree on something, and this in particular feels like the kind of thing that he really, really wants to be on the same page about.

At the same time, he can’t keep adapting himself to her. He needs to tell her what he really thinks, before they can start thinking about talking. He’s done keeping his feelings a secret. “But I wanted it to” he replies, suddenly sure of himself.

He feels, more than sees, her head snap back to look at him, and he knows what he’ll find there if he looks: surprise, fear, maybe admiration at his bluntness, and probably a fourth thing. But he can’t look, because he doesn’t know if that fourth thing will be reciprocation, or that he’ll find that she feels sorry for him, and if it’s the latter he doesn’t know what it will be of his heart.

“Alex…” she says again, but in that moment there’s a crash of porcelain against floor, and Ellis’ wails filling the room, and Meredith is gone from his side, already scooping up her daughter from her high chair and rocking her against her shoulder. 

The moment is gone too. 

*

After that, they never try to broach the subject again.

She doesn’t avoid him, and he doesn’t avoid her, because they still live together, work together, he still makes dinner for the kids when her surgeries run late, so they can’t really pretend the other doesn’t exist. On the surface, nothing has changed, but inside of Alex’s head things keep spinning in a thousand different directions, and his stomach flips every time he sees her.

They still spend a lot of nights just the two of them, chatting on the couch with tequila or beer waiting for one or both of the sisters to come home and join them. They text. They make fun of Kepner when her intern boy-toy does something dumb in the OR.

They don’t share a bed anymore.

Meredith keeps her distance a little, tenses up imperceptibly when he gets too close, but she doesn’t seem to freak out too much at any of it, and after a couple of weeks Alex slowly starts to settle down too. So what if he still dreams about that damn kiss every night, the important thing is that it doesn’t look like Meredith is going to disappear from him life, and that is all that counts, right? He can learn to live with dreams.

Thankfully, no one else seems to have noticed anything being off with them.

*

“So, what is up with you and Mer?”

The ER is chaotic enough today that Alex is thankful no one will be able to hear the sharp breath he sucks in at Jackson’s question. _Crap._

So much for no one noticing.

“Is something supposed to _be_ up with me and Mer?” He is going for nonchalant, but he knows his shoulders are tensing up, and he’s losing focus, and when the stitches he’s tying on the fifteen year old girl in front of them slip, he throws the instruments on the tray with a frustrated groan.

“Easy, Karev” Jackson warns him. He studies him for a second with a worried look, Alex’s behaviour putting him on high alert (if he wasn’t already), and then he tries again. “So, things are good with you two?”

“Yeah, of course they are.”

Jackson raises one single brow, humming in a tone that remarkably resembles his mother’s, and Alex tries not to look up. He knows Jackson’s staring him down, and he’s sure that that if he returns the look, something incriminating will show up all over his face and he can’t afford that right now.

“Who is this Meredith? Your girlfriend?” the girl, Nicole, pipes up from her place between them, looking up curiously at both of them. Alex has done this job long enough that he’s learned by now how to deal with overzealous, nosey teenage girls. The best approach is to turn down their interest, and never give enough information for them to latch on to.

“No.”

“Well…” Jackson’s answer is almost in sync with his, and the girl perks up immediately. 

Great, that’s two for two on the things-to-avoid list: they’ve gotten the girl really curious, and what’s worse is that now she has an opening to dig in for more. Alex rolls his eyes and groans in frustration, before his brain latches onto the thing that really frustrates him.

What is _well…_ supposed to mean?

“Dr Avery?” Nicole asks sweetly, batting her eyelashes at him, and Alex already knows this is a lost cause. He’s screwed now. Jackson steals a glance at Alex, a wicked grin on his face, before focusing his attention on Nicole, his tone conspiratorial. “Well, she’s not his girlfriend, that’s true, but they live together.”

“As friends” Alex feels the need to point out, even though it’s clear that neither of them is listening to him anymore.

“Okay, but that is not weird” Nicole offers, eyebrow raised questionly, and maybe Alex is starting to like the girl a little more now.

“They are both doctors, and he has been living with her, her three kids, and her two sisters for the past two years.” Jackson explains, the only thing that would make his mocking tone worse would be if he’d start to actually count things off his fingers. “Actually, if we’re counting on and off, make it more like ten.”

“...Yeah, that is a little weird” Nicole concedes, after a beat. Alex’s definitely back to hating her now.

“Dr Avery” he tries to warn him, but Jackson just shoot him a quick glance, as if to say _you get what you deserve, buddy_ , before diving right back into his conversation with the girl, as if Alex wasn’t even there.

“Right? And after years of being attached at the hip, lately they are barely speaking anymore. _That_ is weird.” He looks up at Alex again, his expression softening. Clearly, for all that he’s been making fun of him, he really had meant for this to be a real conversation, his concern authentic. “Maggie thinks so too.”

“Who is Maggie? Is she _your_ girlfriend?” Nicole asks again, a little high-pitched, now clearly heartbroken, and Alex wants to laugh at the way Jackson’s eyes widen in panic. He really didn’t realize what he was getting himself into. _You get what you deserve, buddy._

“Yes, she’s my girlfriend” Jackson tells her with a smile, and the girl’s demeanor instantly changes, going from heartbroken to uninterested in the blink of an eye. “Oh, okay” she shrugs, fishes her phone out of her pocket, and just like that she’s not paying attention to them anymore. Alex is always amazed at how quickly teenagers bounce back from a crush. Maybe he should take pointers. 

Nicole’s attention is now far gone, lost in her Instagram feed, and Alex and Jackson can get back to work. They do it in silence, focused on the job but also enjoying the mindlessness of it all. Stitches are intern work (or plastics work, whatever), and Alex hasn’t done it in so long he had forgotten how relaxing it can be. 

“I was serious before, is everything okay?” Jackson asks after a while, quietly, but it still manages to startle him. His friend looks so genuinely concerned that he decides there’s no point in putting up the tough guy act again.

“Why, what did Pierce say?”

“Nothing, just that… things have seemed off, lately. Like you act the same when you’re together, but you’re being overly polite with each other. She thinks it’s unsettling.”

Alex considers this. Sure, he can see why it could look like that. He really thought that things had been getting better, and that there was weirdness, that’s true, but that they were working through it. Clearly, he’d been too optimistic.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think we’re acting any different.”

_Liar._

“Oh, come on, don’t give me that bullshit. You totally are.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Yes, you are, and I know that because I used to do the same. When April and I started having sex, well- after we _stopped_ having sex the first time, we told ourselves no one would notice.”

Alex laughs darkly at the memory. “Dude, literally everyone could.” 

“I know, that’s exactly my point! There’s some things you can’t hide from people, no matter how stealthy you think you’re being.”

“You do have a point” Alex muses, and he realizes his mistake as soon as the words leave his mouth. The air around them freezes still, and when he looks up Jackson is staring at him, jaw hanging open. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“Wait a second-”

“No, no, that’s not-”

“Did you just say that-”

“No, that’s not what I me-” Alex tries to backtrack, but it’s too late now, Jackson’s has latched onto the implications of his answer, and he’s not going to let it go.

“Did you have sex with Meredith?!”

“No!” he shouts, louder than he meant to. He’s panicking now, looking for anything that will pull him out of this situation. From the corner of eye, he sees a blonde ponytail walk by, and he jumps at the chance. He needs to leave, now.

“Helm!” Alex calls for her, and she stops to approach the bed. 

“Yes, Dr Karev?”

“Nicole here needs these stitches to be dressed and then you can discharge her. I have another patient to check in on” he tells her, quickly, stumbling over his words a little, avoiding everyone’s eyes, but he knows Jackson is still staring at him. 

He’s not even halfway down the hall before he feels someone yanking at his arm, and he finds himself face to face with Jackson again.

“Man, what the hell?!”

“Just- leave it, Avery, I’m serious.” The panic from before has dissipated a little, and in its place Alex feels annoyance creeping up. He’s never been very good at talking about himself and his feelings, he has always very pointedly avoided doing so as much as possible. Jackson being so insistent is making him feel defensive, and he tries to leave again, but Jackson grabs him by the elbow, yanking him back to face him. 

“Did you guys sleep together, is that it?” He whispers, concerned, and Alex has to fight the anger bubbling up in his chest. _Why does anyone even care?_

“No, we didn’t sleep together.”

“Then wha- because that did not look like nothing. Somethi-”

“We kissed, okay?” Alex blurts out, finally, and he’s thankful the hallway seems to be mostly empty, his voice surely carrying all the way to the end of it.

If anyone asked him, he would say he confessed to get Avery off his back. The impulsive and emotionally stunted part of him knows that there’s nothing better than a shocking reveal to distract someone long enough to make an exit. But the truth is, he’s been feeling like the secret has been eating away at him, and some part of his brain knew it wouldn’t be long until he started spewing it out to anyone who’d listen. 

The worst part of this is the fact that usually, when he feels like this, Meredith’s the one that gets him to open up, even when he thinks he doesn’t want to. He’s been taking for granted the easiness of having her there to always listen, with no judgement. It’s so much easier when you know the other person won’t judge.

He guesses Avery will have to do for now.

“Oh, okay” Jackson goes quiet for a second. He looked less surprised when he thought they’d had sex than learning about a simple _kiss_. Alex thinks that’s almost funny. “That’s not a big deal.”

This time it’s Alex’s turn to look surprised. “Not a big deal? Are you serious?”

“I mean, it’s just a kiss. It’s probably not even the first time that-”

“Excuse me?!” Alex shouts, and the nurse at the end of the hallway turns her head to look at them, alarmed. He takes a deep breath to even his voice, and speaks again. “Excuse me?”

“You and Mer never kissed?”

“No! Why would you think that?!”

Jackson’s eyes go wide again, and he’s speechless for a second. “Well, I- I thought-” he stammers, “You’ve known each other so long, I just kind of assumed it had happened at some point. Neither of you were exactly saints back then.”

“That’s just- that’s not even the point. No, we never kissed before.”

The weight of the confession seems to finally sink in, and Jackson just stares at Alex, mouth open. “Oh. So, you guys...”

“Kissed. Yeah.”

“And was it...good?”

Alex can feel his eyebrows shoot up at the question, unexpected as it is. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

“I don’t know!” Jackson cries, panicked, “I am still trying to wrap my head around it. I mean, this is...big.”

“Yeah, tell me about it” Alex mumbles. He collapses against the nearest wall, bowing his head with a deep, shaky exhale. He must sound as defeated as he feels, because Jackson’s expression softens, and he studies him for a long time before speaking up again. “Was it what you wanted?”

“I-” he starts, unsure on what to say, how much he _can_ say. The entire situation is still so confusing, up-in-the-air uncertain, that he doesn’t know he should even talk about it. But that’s the point, isn’t it, the fact that not talking about it has had him running in circles for weeks now. At some point, he has got to speak up. “It was.”

Jackson’s mouth is still hanging open, and he’s about to say something when his pager goes off. He looks back and forth between the device in his hand and Alex, torn between staying and answering the call. They hold each other’s stare for a minute, before Jackson nods and turns to walk away. Alex exhales, his back still against the wall, trying to collect himself. At least he’s off the hook for now. Jackson’s already at the end of the hallway when a thought strikes Alex, and he pushes himself off the wall.

“Hey, Avery?”

“Yeah?” he turns just in time, waiting.

“Please don’t tell Pierce about this? If Mer hasn’t, it’s because she doesn’t want her to know yet. Just- please.”

Jackson just nods, smiles reassuringly, a little awkwardly, when his pager beeps again, and he throws Alex a last look before he turns the corner and disappears, leaving him slumped against the wall, trying to make sense of the conversation they just had.

He was just hoping for things to go back to normal, but the more he opens up to people about it, the more he feels like control is slipping away from him. Bailey first, now Avery… Alex makes a decision, right then and there, to keep everything to himself moving forward.

He’s pretty good at that.

*

Alex rarely has a reason to find himself on the surgical ward: the peds department has its own floor, and that’s where he spends most of his days, but one of his old patients just turned eighteen, he needs surgery and Alex was paged to fill the new surgeon in on the kid’s medical history. That was this morning.

He has _not_ been lingering at the nurses desk all day doing paperwork, hoping he’d run into Meredith. That would be pathetically sad.

He keeps thinking about his conversation with Avery this morning. He knows he shouldn’t have said anything, that it will only lead to something bad, but he’s been feeling so… tired. Tired of hiding, pretending like everything is fine, and it’s starting to dawn on him that he can’t do that anymore. He needs to properly own up to his feelings at this point, no matter what Meredith’s reaction to that will be. He knows all of that, rationally, and yet some part of his brain keeps telling him that having her in his life, even in this half-assed situation they’ve found themselves into, is far better than not having her there at all.

She’s been there so long he’s not really sure what his life would look like if she left.

A sound from the end of the hallway catches his attention, and it’s _her_. He watches her follow a gurney that’s being wheeled into a patient’s room, her head buried in the guy’s chart. She’s so focused on her work that it’s clear she hasn’t seen him, but Alex still instinctively ducks to hide behind the counter. It’s suddenly very important that she doesn’t see him here.

Maybe the whole situation isn’t pathetically _sad_ , maybe it’s just downright _pathetic_.

He’s still considering his choices, wondering if it’d be better to keep hiding until Meredith leaves, or try to get away without her seeing him, when his phone rings, making him jump. He scrambles to take the device out of his pocket and answer before the ringtone catches anyone’s attention, and at the same time moving to hide out in the office space just behind the desk. There, in the darkness and quiet of the room, he finally answers the call.

“Alex Karev, hello?”

“Karev, you have got to be shitting me right now.”

“Hello Yang” Alex dramatically sighs into the phone. _Why do these phone calls always start like this?_ ”You need something?”

“I think you have something to tell me, don’t you?”

“I- what? You’re the one who called _me_ , Yang.”

“Fine, let’s forget for one second that Meredith broke up with that cardio-McDreamy-wannabe _six months ago_ and I didn’t get a peep out of you about it all this time, which is just disturbing and rude and we’re going to have to have a serious conversation about it someday, and let’s just-” 

“Wait a second” he interrupts her, his head spinning from the mountain of information she dumped on him at record speed. “She told you?”

“She told me, _eventually_. If you’d done your job and said something when it was happening, I could have-”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up for a second. When did she tell you?”

“I don’t know, two weeks ago? Does that matter?”

Two weeks ago was after _the thing_ had happened. He’s not surprised he didn’t know about it, Meredith has stopped telling him anything important. He guesses this qualifies. “No, it doesn’t, nevermind.”

“Anyway” Cristina continues, stretching her vowels for emphasys, “that’s not why I called. Nick Marsh is at your hospital, and I need you to find him and Meredith and lock them in a room together until they fall in love.”

“Huh?” is the only sound Alex manages to get out. Yang has always been too much for him, and after years apart he’s lost even the tiny bit of practice he once had at keeping up with her.

“Ugh, I always forget how slow you can be sometimes” she whines, and he’s sure she’s rolling her eyes at him on the other end of the phone. “Long story short, when I worked at Mayo-”

“-when you were having your midlife crisis-”

“- _when I worked at Mayo_ ” she stresses, unimpressed with his quip, “I had this friend, he was a General fellow, and I had almost convinced him to come with me to Seattle when I came back. At that time, I half-hoped Mer would meet him and dump Derek’s ass.”

Alex snorts into his phone, because what she just said is terrible, but also a little funny. She’d never say that to Meredith though, this is the kind of catty remark she would only keep to herself, or share with him because he’s the only one who would get the true meaning of her words, and the only one that wouldn’t feel bad for laughing.

“And now he’s here? How the hell do you know that?”

“A different friend called. They did a retrieval together a couple hours ago, and she thought it was hilarious that he was dumb enough to collapse right out of surgery, so she called me. It’s kind of an inside joke, because one time-” she’s launching into another long winded anecdote, and Alex feels his annoyance spike. He can’t do this right now.

“Yeah, I don’t really care. What am I supposed to do?”

“I told you! You have to find Mer, and tell her she should go meet him. I would have called her, but a, I needed to give you hell for dropping the ball this hard on Riggs; and b, her phone was off, she’s probably in surgery.”

Alex turns around then. From behind the blinds in the office, he can see Meredith standing in the patient’s room across the hallway. The man in the bed is awake now, and Alex can only see Meredith’s back but he’s pretty sure she’s smiling down at him from the way the guy’s looking up adoringly at her.

His blood freezes in his veins.

“Yang?” he chokes out a whisper, and he barely waits for her hum of acknowledgement before he asks, “what does this guy look like?”

“I don’t know, medium height? Light eyes, blonde-ish hair? The hair was what I thought could beat Derek. It used to look good, and I-”

Alex stops listening. His ears are ringing, and he’s stuck, frozen in place watching Meredith fret around the patient, her professional front slipping when he says something that makes her laugh, and he can see her, even from his hiding spot, every time she blushes and tries to hold in a smile.

He feels sick.

“Alex? Are you still there?”

“I, huh- yeah. Sorry, I have to go, I just got paged.” He hangs up the phone before she can even say goodbye.

He can’t stay here anymore.

*

He’s running.

Well, maybe not really running, because this is a hospital and he’s a responsible adult, but inside he feels like he is. He goes through his usual rounds, checking on the NICU and on the twelve year old girl that needs a valve replacement, and the whole time he wishes he could just break out of his skin and _leave_ , walk down the street and only stop when his legs gave out. 

He talks with a worried mother, and instead of her voice he hears Yang’s, waxing poetics about this random guy who apparently is _so perfect_ for Meredith that she’s had him in mind for her for the past six years. A guy so wonderful he could have given Shepherd a run for his money.

The thing is, Alex wouldn’t have cared if this conversation had happened a week before. Yang knows Meredith like the back of her hand, he’s not going to dispute that, but she’s not all-knowing, and more than that _she’s not here_ , there’s things she doesn’t know now. Last week, he would have told her she was talking out of her ass and never given this guy another thought.

But he saw Meredith’s face as she talked to him.

That’s what makes it worse, the first hand confirmation Yang was actually right, this is the guy for her. He only caught a glimpse before he couldn’t take it anymore, the way Meredith bowed her head, coy, trying not to smile at his words. The red on her cheeks when she blushed under his gaze. 

Alex has seen all of that, and he’s also seen how Meredith barely looks at him anymore, even when they’re at home together and she just looks straight ahead, or at some random point behind his shoulder, but never at him. Lately, just the tiniest smirk at one of his deadpan jokes feels like the biggest freaking victory.

He’s seen all that, and this is the day it finally hits him that maybe he’s broken them beyond repair, and he’s not ready to deal with any of that. Maybe this is the time he’s finally lost her.

So he’s running.

*

The elevator doors slide open, and Meredith is standing right in the middle of it. She looks up from her phone and her eyes focus on him. She smiles brightly, like she’s really happy to see him, the way she hasn’t done in what feels like forever, and his heart sinks to the pit of his stomach.

_Oh, no._

“Hey!” She’s way too cheerful, way too happy, and he hates that he knows why that is. He wishes he didn’t, this way he could still wonder, could pretend it was a surgery gone well, or that she’s just gotten off the phone with one of the kids. He could be particularly self-destructing, and convince himself she was this happy because she’d bumped into _him._ But of course, because he’s never been lucky one day of his life, he gets to know the real reason.

The reason being this guy who is apparently perfect for her.

A flash of anger, directed at no one in particular, fires from his chest.

“Hey” he answers weakly, and steps inside the elevator. He’s careful not to touch her, and even her body language sets him off. She’s been so obviously avoiding him lately, basically jumping up every time he got too close, and now she’s just calmly standing there, giving no indication she’s even registered his body next to hers. It’s deeply irrational, but he suddenly feels ignored, and he wants to scream.

“I operated on a surgeon today, isn’t that cool? I love when that happens.” She sounds perky, almost _happy_ , and he doesn’t really trust his voice to carry actual words, so he just hums in acknowledgement and lets her continue. She doesn’t seem to notice. “I got to talk to him after the surgery, he’s actually a pretty interesting guy. Are you going to be home early tonight?” she asks, her tone light, and the change in subject is so sudden, so effortlessly casual that the last string holding his temper together snaps.

“Do you even care?”

“Alex, wh- what?!” 

“I said” he growl, “I didn’t think you would care.” He feels out of his body, like there’s someone else standing in his place, getting increasingly mad at her with every word she says. She opens her mouth, words dying in her throat, her face painted with confusion and hurt. It lasts a fraction of a second, and then she straightens, ready for a fight. It makes him feel better, in a way, that she’s going to push back.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“You’ve not been acting like you do, lately.”

Over their heads, the elevator pings, signaling they’re on the right floor. The doors open, and Alex looks over at Meredith to see if she’s going to step out. She doesn’t move, her face schooled in a serious frown, so they just stand there, looking at each other, until they doors close up again and it feels like time can unpause, take them back to their argument.

“You’re not being serious” she says, voice still even, but he can hear the faint whisper of annoyance in it, like she thinks he’s acting like a child. That, the fake restraint, has him seeing red.

“Don’t act clueless, Mer, it’s not a good look on you.” He can’t stop himself, can’t stop spewing hate at her, and her quiet, restrained anger makes him even madder. How dare she.

“What is this about?” she tries to reason. Her eyes soften, just the tiniest bit, and he’s reminded of how many times they’ve been down this road before. He gets mad, pushes people away, with his words and sometimes his fists until they leave him alone, ending up proving his point. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy, he knows that, but sometimes he can’t help himself. Everytime that happened, Meredith was always the only one that he couldn’t scare away, so he shouldn’t be surprised it’s happening again.

_Well. This is gonna be a nice challenge._

“Wh- what is this about?” he laughs, but it’s bitter, he can feel the incredulity burning at the back of his tongue.

It’s about the fact that she’s been flirting with a patient, right in front of him (the fact that she didn’t know he was there doesn’t matter), not caring what it might do to him. He’s seen her, how smitten she was, blushing like a little girl at some guy she’s just met. He has a cutting quip about her pulling a Izzie, wants to say something awful about LVAD wires and killing the things she loves… but he stops. Fortunately, even in his blind rage he knows he can’t tell her that.

It's also about her ignoring him. It’s about her checking out of their friendship and not being mature enough to admit it, letting him stay at her house but not talking to him anymore, the way she’s been doing long enough that he doesn’t remember a time before it. It’s about the fact that she let herself fall into him for a second, and then changed her mind, left him reeling from the searing pain of getting everything he’s ever wanted and then getting it taken away from him.

Even in his blind rage, he knows he most certainly can’t tell her _that_.

“Alex, I’m sorry” she says, looking down at her feet. She suddenly sounds defeated, truly apologetic, and instead of bringing him down from his high it just spurs him on.

“I am not” he growl, and takes a step forward, crowding her space so quickly she jumps back, alarmed. He’s not much taller than her, but he still feels like he’s towering, like he’s trying to surround her with his entire body. It’s strange, that even in this state of blind rage he still wants nothing more than take another step into her and just kiss her, push her against the wall and-

He dips his head slightly, bringing their faces closer. He keeps his eyes wide open, staring into hers, daring her to do it, take the challenge, close the distance between them and let go. He desperately needs her to understand he’s not backing down, and at the same time he feels petty enough that he wants her to be the one to take the first step. It’s almost mean, and a little twisted, but that’s just the way his rage-addled brain is working right now.

“Well, what am I supposed to do with that?” she shoots back instead, an angry bite to her words, and it catches him off guard. She’s not playing defensive anymore. “What should I do, huh? Tell me.”

“Mer, I don’t-”

“No, please. Tell me.” She’s furious now, stepping forward and he has to step back, their roles reversed, the dynamic flipped. She has fire in her eyes and is waving her finger at him, poking at his shoulder, and he’s stunned into silence. “Tell me what I should do. Because you are not being fair, you know I can’t- you have got to have known I would have needed time to- Alex.” She calls his name, and he can see her deflate, her anger tapering down before she’s left panting in front of him. His own rage immediately disappears, and his body reacts before his brain can, holding out a hand to reach her.

“Mer…”

“No, please. I told you, can we please pretend it didn’t happen?”

He opens his mouth to answer, but the elevator pings again, the doors open, and the small space gets flooded with the sounds coming from the lobby, bursting their little bubble open. Meredith ducks out before he can say anything, or stop her, and Alex’s left there, on the wrong floor of the hospital, the elevator quickly filling up with other people. He catches her retreating frame as she turns a corner, and her words are still stinging in his ears.

_Can we please pretend it didn’t happen?_

Why the hell not. He’s gotten pretty good at that by now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG
> 
> the last few scenes were a bitch to write, i didn't really know how to make the whole fight work. i'm still not super satisfied, but there are plenty of things about this chapter i actually love so there's that. also sorry that the only waffle sunday scene you got in an angsty one (even tho that scene i really like and enjoyed writing)
> 
> next two updates will come very soon, i promise! i can't believe this is almost over!
> 
> as always, i'd love it if you left me a comment, or if you want you can find me on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com)! i love talking tv, and i also take fic requests from time to time.
> 
> thanks for reading xx


	9. i really like the way my life is now

When they were residents, meeting at Joe’s usually meant getting shitfaced-drunk at the end of a long shift. More often than not, it also meant the place where you could give a voice to your urges without feeling _too_ bad about it in the morning.

Once, Alex took the leap and kissed Izzie square in the mouth in front of everyone.

Another time, driven by alcohol and his own messed up judgement, he slid closer to Addison Montgomery and kissed her too, and really, he should have probably cared about people seeing them that time.

To this day, he’s still not quite sure if he regrets doing any of that, but now that he’s older, requests to hang out at Joe’s usually don’t send a thrill down his spine anymore. 

Usually. 

*

_can you meet me at joe’s when you’re off your shift?_

His phone pings with the text while he’s in the attendings’ lounge, changing out of his scrubs after the longest day ever. He’s still mulling over their argument from earlier, the way she had looked at him in that weird way, like she wanted to tell him something but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.

The text is a surprise, but the way it sparks a tiny jolt of excitement in him is not. He has long stopped cringing at the way hearing from her makes him feel, even when he’s completely aware of the fact that if it were someone else telling him this about themselves, he would laugh his ass off at how pathetic that sounded.

He makes his way to Joe’s, only has to stop once on the ER floor to answer an intern’s question.

He knows texts don’t carry meaning and tone very well, and he shouldn’t read anything into this, except that they haven’t been together drinking, alone, in maybe months. There’s something, in the way she asked him, that makes him a tiny bit hopeful.

*

She’s the first thing he sees when he walks through the door: perched on a stool at the bar, her back to him. She’s wearing a light blue shirt he’s not sure he’s ever seen on her before, but for a second it confuses him, for a second it makes her look like she’s back to wearing their residency-days light blue scrubs.

But then she turns around, wavy hair whipping behind her, and he comes back to reality. It’s still Meredith, the one from _now._ She’s smiling at him. 

“Hey” she calls for him to join her. There’s already a bottle of the beer he likes waiting for him, and his growing suspicions of _this is good_ make way again in his head. He climbs on the stool next to her and shoves the thoughts down forcefully. Let it never be said that Alex Karev is an optimist.

“You look like crap” he jokes, because he knows he can’t say what he really wants to. 

_You look beautiful._

She opens her mouth in a mock-offended gasp, “I do not!”, but it’s almost half-hearted, like she doesn’t really want to play this game with him right now. She falls silent, and just studies him for a long moment. The words threaten to spill out again, and he needs to fill the silence somehow.

“Long day?” It’s a cheap cop out, he knows. He saw her earlier, he already knows all he needs to know about her day. For some reason she’s choosing to go along with it, thinking on what she wants to say. 

“I saved a transplant surgeon today.”

He knew this already. She told him already, before things precipitated and they both started yelling, and he’s still working his mind around that strange phone call he got from Yang. He also watched her with the guy, no longer than five hours ago. The way she says it, he knows this is a conversation he should really brace himself for. “Uhm”, is the only thing he can manage.

“He was…” she’s looking for the right words, and he can’t tear his eyes away from her. He feels like he needs to keep looking at her or she’ll disappear into thin air or, even worse, she’ll leave him there and go find the guy. Or something. 

“...Smart, and funny.”

_Crap._

“And?” he tries not to choke.

“...Hot” she says, heavy, like she’s admitting some kind of big secret, or something she knows she shouldn’t say. There’s still the tiniest hint of a smile there, like maybe she’s still considering the whole thing. Maybe Yang managed to get in touch with her after all.

_Crap. Crap._

“So, what? Married?” He has to say something, find something that’s wrong with this guy, something that will make him look the far better choice in her eyes, some fault that will calm his jittering nerves.

“No.”

“Gay? Lives in a foreign country?”

“Minnesota.”

“Same difference” he scoffs, and Meredith laughs. She laughs at him and his usual deadpan snark he knows she doesn’t mind, but then she’s suddenly serious again, lost in thought, and he realizes this probably wasn’t the point of her asking him here in the first place. The hopeful suspicions cautiously peek out again.

“So, what’s the problem?” Alex asks, hoping none of his real intentions are showing through in his tone. This isn’t about him right now, as much as he might want to. He’ll help her work through her thoughts before he’ll even try to talk himself up to her.

“No problem. He was just...my patient.” She looks almost at peace with it, like she’s resigned herself to the notion that nothing could ever happen anyway. He can tell she’s a little sad about it, but there’s already a tiny smile on her face. There’s so many contradictions in her reaction that he needs to make sure he’s got this right.

“So, he was smart, funny, and hot and…”

“My patient” she tells him again, with the same sad sigh.

And then she grows suddenly serious again, tears her gaze away and hides it into the bowl of peanuts on the bar, crushing the shells with her fingers. She has a tell, when she’s really nervous or she’s trying to find the courage to do something, she fidgets and plays with her fingers a lot. He’s learned to be acutely aware of it.

It also strikes him in that moment that they haven’t broken eye contact once since he walked through the door, when in the past month she’s never been able to look at him for longer than two minutes before she was making some excuse to focus on something else. He has missed her, even in the little things like this one, and he hadn’t even realized how much until just now.

“I really like the way my life is now” she whispers, and in the loud noise of the bar he almost doesn’t hear her. Their eyes meet again briefly when she tries to steal a side glance at him, and he sees something different in it, in her. He’s not so sure she’s still talking about the guy. “I just- he made me feel something I hadn’t felt since Derek.”

And there it is.

His heart sinks into the pit of his stomach. But she’s still looking at him, with that look she gets when she’s begging him to understand her without her having to outright say anything. And he’s trying, he really is.

He gets why a day like today, a patient like this one, might remind her of Derek. To her, Derek has always been the one that brought up all the big feelings, good _and_ bad. He remembers her saying, when they were young and he sometimes pretended he didn’t care about her dramatic crap, how she never had a guy make her feel so much. Years later, after Derek died, she was still talking about how she couldn’t find anyone that would quite have the same effect on her as he did. 

He understands, because he has felt like that for a long time. It took him a long time to realize that what he used to feel for Izzie, and even for Jo, had never been quite right. And he kept trying to push himself to make it work, and punishing himself when things inevitably fell apart. Everytime that happened, he used to think there was nothing else for him anymore. He has learned that maybe that’s not entirely true, and more than anything he wants her to know she doesn’t have to feel that way either. 

He’s trying to understand her, he really is. That doesn’t mean it still doesn’t hurt like hell.

“Is it really the worst thing in the world?” he asks her then, because he can’t do this anymore: he can’t keep playing the guessing game with her, and with the way she feels about him, about them. “Knowing it’s out there if you want it?”

_Here_ , he wants to say. _It’s right here if you want it. If you want me._

She looks away again, and he’s not sure that’s such a good sign, but then her words come out in another whisper. “No, it’s not the worst thing.”

When she looks back up at him, it looks like she’s waiting. Waiting for him to say something, maybe. But he can’t bring himself to, can’t talk her into another relationship with another guy just because she doesn’t want to hear about _his_ feelings. He still wants her to be happy, though. He desperately needs her to understand that she doesn’t have to stop talking to him about stuff, just because he… because he screwed everything up, possibly.

“Okay” he just tells her, actually unable to say anything else. He feels empty, tired, and that’s not just from the long day. He feels like she’s lost some kind of battle, the last in an infinite string of battles he didn’t even realize he wanted to fight until it was too late to try and win. 

*

They stop talking after that, just sit together, each nursing their own drink quietly, looking decisively out of place in the chaotic atmosphere of the bar. Meredith is back to crushing peanut shells, and when closing time comes she has a small mound of dust in front of her. 

She is definitely still worried about something.

Joe keeps shooting them apologetic looks, and Alex knows the man will never actively kick them out: he’s gotten too fond of them over the years to risk being rude, but it’s clear he just wants them to get the hell out so he can go home. 

“Mer?” Alex clears his throat, and she turns to him, startled, like she has been lost in her head until now. “Maybe we should go home?”

She looks around the bar, just now noticing how empty it has gotten. She laughs quietly, feeling a little guilty, and smiles apologetically at Joe while she pays their tab before they get up and leave.

The walk back to the hospital’s parking lot is quiet, she’s back into her own head and Alex can’t really tell what’s going on inside it.

She starts the car, and he wonders if she’s still thinking about her dead husband. It’s been over three years, and he really thought she was getting better, learning to deal with it in a way that could bring her some peace. He never had any expectations that she would just _get over it_ , he always knew that’s just impossible. Honestly, he has been looking at her everyday feeling proud, proud of the way she’s pulled herself out of her grief and tried to be happy again. It really strikes him as strange that she would retreat back into grief, especially now, especially today.

When they stop at a red light, he braves stealing a glance in her direction. She’s worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, but the rest of her face is almost relaxed, and the two things don’t compute: he expected her to be just a step away from one of her meltdowns, and instead she looks almost _fine_. It reminds him of earlier tonight, when she was telling him about the surgeon guy, and she was listing off all the reasons he seemed right for her, _and maybe that’s it_ , he tells himself. She’s still thinking about it, going over everything in her head, deciding maybe he’s worth a try. 

If Alex felt defeated before, now he’s definitely ready to wave the white flag.

How many times has he done this already, sacrificing himself so that the girl could be with the other guy? There has to be some sick sort of irony to it, how he realizes his feelings just a little too late every single time, and how he paints himself as the bad guy to make it easier on the girl to let him down when, really, isn’t letting her go the good-guy thing to do?

For some reason, the idea of doing that hurts more than it usually does.

*

“You should go back to the hospital to find him, if that’s what you want” Alex blurts out before he can talk himself out of it. They’re at the house now, she’s just turned off the key in the ignition and she jumps on her seat at his voice.

“What?” she cries, high-pitched, whipping her head up to look at him. “It’s not!”

“Mer, it’s fine.” He swallows, hard, braces himself before saying what he knows is the thing that she needs to hear, that will make her decision easier on her. It doesn’t mean it won’t hurt like hell. He should know, he’s an expert at this point, isn’t he. “If you really think this guy might be the one, and you want to see if it’ll go somewhere, you should-”

“Alex, no”, she cuts him off, serious, eyes hard, resting her hand on his forearm, trying to quiet him, and it sends electricity sparking through him. “I really don’t.”

“Mer, really, I think you sh-”

“Alex” she stops him, again, and it sound almost like a bark, the way it comes loud and stern, like she’s claiming for his full attention.

He looks back at her. Her eyes are full of fire, and even in the dim light of the driveway and the dark car, he can see the flash of resolve rolling over her entire face before she even makes her move.

Meredith leans over the console, and kisses him, hard. 

He’s stunned, has just a second to recover because the car is too wide and she’s losing her balance, quickly, and he has to catch her somehow, hands flying up to grab her forearms, almost like a reflex.

Now that she feels more stable, she relaxes against him and the kiss turns softer, slower. There’s nothing about it that feels indecisive, or lust-driven, or compassionate, she’s not doing this because she wants to stop thinking of someone else, she’s not doing it because she sensed it will give him what he wants. She’s kissing him because she wants to, _really wants to_ , and Alex can’t wrap his head around that. His brain is still firing up signals screaming _Derek, transplant surgeon guy, Derek, Riggs, transplant surgeon guy who also has Yang’s stamp of approval._

He has to try really hard to quiet the voices down, because right now he’s kissing Meredith and they are all _so damn distracting_ , and he doesn’t want to miss on any of the wonderful things that are happening right now.

She trails her hand up his arm until she’s resting it on his jaw and it’s all it takes for him to melt into her, releasing the tension he had been holding into his shoulders. He parts his lips slightly, and she’s already there with him, darting her tongue out to meet his. They’ve only done this once before but it already feels like he’s developed the muscle memory for it, already knows all the things that will make her tick. 

He’s not sure how long they go on like this for, but at some point he starts to feel decisively lightheaded, and he has to pull away. Meredith chases after his mouth with a pout, and he curses his lungs, can’t bear the thought of having to be too far from her, even when they’re still sitting in the car together. He keeps her there, squeezing at her forearms when she tries to pull away. They’re forehead to forehead, noses brushing, and he realizes he hasn’t opened his eyes once since she lunged at him.

He’s scared that if he does, he’ll find this is all just a dream. But if it’s not, if this is reality, he can’t let himself miss it, so he dares to look.

She’s smiling timidly, careful, like she’s trying not to scare him away. He wants to smile back, dive back in and never have to talk about any of it, but he knows they can’t do that. It’s better to iron things out now, before he gets too comfortable and she has to rip his heart out when telling him this is all a big mistake. Again.

“This is not what I meant before” he whispers. They’re still close enough that he doesn’t need to do more than that for her to hear him.

“It’s not?” she ask, eyes wide, pulling away from him and plopping back into her seat. He immediately misses her heat. She has that classic _Meredith_ look on her face, like when she thinks she has the situation all figured out and she’s suddenly surprised when she finds out she’s gotten it all wrong.

The thing is, she didn’t get this wrong, at all, but not enough oxygen is making its way into his brain to allow coherent thought right now. Plus, he’s pretty sure he used to be able to think better a second ago, when she was in his arms and not all the way over there… on the seat next to him. He needs to get a grip.

“No-, well- I mean... it is, but you don’t have to if you don’t- you don’t have to do anything” he’s rambling now, and nothing is going as smoothly as he wanted it to. He feels clumsy and it’s rare for him, to feel so completely and utterly without a clue.

He readies himself for the next blow, the moment she’s gonna tell him _oh, ok, in that case I’ll take the out_ , but instead she just smiles again, bright and full of tenderness. “Will you shut up already?”

She leans over again and this time he’s ready for it, meets her halfway, both of them suspended over the console. It’s even better this time, slow and tentative, like for the first time they’re both realizing what a monumental moment this is. For the first time, they’re not fueled by anger and frustration, and it’s not because they needed to prove a point. They are just kissing because they want to, because they’re allowing themselves to, and it’s the best kiss he’s ever had.

It also ends way too soon.

She groans against his mouth when her phone starts ringing, dropping her forehead against his for a long moment before she backs away, head already buried in her bag looking for it. He wonders if the dull ache he seems to be feeling every time she detaches herself from him will, eventually, ever go away.

“It’s Maggie” she tells him, turning the screen for him to see.

“Wanna answer?”

“She picked the kids up from school, she’s at home” she explains, declining the call with a swift swipe across the screen. “We should probably just- we should go inside.”

Alex’s still waiting for her to freak out on him, and for some reason the fact that she isn’t is deeply unsettling him. She’s not acting particularly nervous, surely doesn’t seem like she’s regretting anything about tonight. Yet, he can’t bring himself to trust it, not yet.

They walk through the door, and he almost stumbles into Meredith when she stops a few feet into the foyer. She’s staring into the living room, where Maggie is pacing nervously back and forth in front of the couch. She hasn’t noticed them yet.

“Uhm- hi?” Meredith tries, and Maggie jumps up at the sound, startled, fear quickly replaced by her usual frazzled, worried energy.

“This is a crisis!” She yells at them, no preamble. It’s clear she expects them to know what she’s talking about, and Alex is relieved when he steals a quick look at Meredith and he sees she looks just as confused as he feels.

“Maggie? What crisis?” Meredith asks her, calm, making work of her coat and purse, she starts to move around the house like nothing is happening. Alex wants to laugh at the scene: it feels normal, familiar, and after the rollercoaster of today he needed this, the _regular_ craziness that makes up his life.

“This _thing_ that is happening!” Maggie goes on in her same tone, waving her hands in the general direction of no one, following an unimpressed Meredith with her eyes as she moves around the room, “I can’t believe you kept it from me!”

“And what is it that I kept from you?” Meredith asks. It sounds like she’s annoyed, but there’s a smirk playing at her lips, and it’s clear she’s far more amused by her sister’s antics than she’s bothered by it. She thrives on the craziness, too.

“You” Maggie points at her, “and _you_ ” she goes on, pointing an accusing finger at Alex and warning sirens start to go off in his head. _Oh, no_. “You two have been having secret sex and not talking about you feelings, and _this is a crisis!_ We need to do something about this!”

“We are having _what?!_ ” Alex hears Meredith shriek before he can even look at her. He, on the other hand, is stunned into silence and a little shell shocked by the entire situation. He does his best not to meet her eyes.

“But it’s okay, Mer!” Maggie hurries over to her, taking her sister’s hands into hers with a desperate look on her face, “we can talk this through! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, I could have helped!”

“I asked Avery not to tell you about it” Alex says, finally, when he manages to get his voice back. The two women snap their heads back in his direction, surprised, like they had forgotten he was there for a second. Maybe that was not the wisest choice of words.

“You told Jackson we’ve had sex?!” Meredith yells at him, getting increasingly redder in the face. If he was waiting for the moment she would freak out… here it is, right on time, even if he could never have predicted the actual circumstances.

“I didn’t tell him we had _sex_!” He tries to defend himself, “but I _did_ tell him to keep his mouth shut about it.” He pointedly glares at Maggie, who is finally starting to come down from her frantic panic. She, at least, has the decency to look a little guilty.

“I know” she winces, “and he’s sorry, but he was worried, and so am I, so I’m glad he told me. This is big! And it is clearly messing with you, and we need to fix this!” 

Maggie has opened the floodgates, and there’s no stopping her now. Alex follows her with his eyes when she starts pacing again, going on and on about how _I should have seen this was happening,_ and how _I’ll have to help you work through it or you two will never get back to normal_ , and...

There’s a long moment before Alex even realizes Meredith has been quietly laughing this entire time. From the corner of his eye, he sees her shoulders shake with laughter and when their eyes meet, hers are shining with unshed tears, a wide smile spreading on her lips.

His heart does a little somersault. 

“Maggie…”

“No, Mer! I won’t let you do this!” Maggie has stopped pacing, and is now back to waving her finger at her sister, like she’s a teacher scolding her. “You will hide and push your feelings down, you two will never talk about it again, and it will drive you apart, and Alex will move out and get a new job and we will never see him again and this will all be-”

“Maggie!” Meredith cuts her off, and her harsher tone finally gets Maggie’s attention. Alex hadn’t noticed, but while Maggie was rambling Meredith had moved closer, and now she’s standing next to him again. Meredith takes his hand in hers, fingers slowly threading with his, and she squeezes.

He looks over at her, and he finds her there, smiling, her eyes fixed into his. He has a million questions running through his head: if this is too soon, if she is doing it to prove a point to him, if she understands what the gesture means. He looks at her, and all the doubts wash away. She knows what she’s going. The realization makes him so happy that he can’t look away, and his cheeks are hurting from how wide he’s smiling.

When they both look back to Maggie, she has stopped walking around the room. She’s staring back at them, a dumbstruck look on her face. She opens her mouth a couple of times, no words coming out of it, eyes darting between their faces and their entangled hands.

“...Oh.”

“Yeah, _oh_ ” Meredith laughs.

Maggie makes a face, stricken and guilty. “I’m sorry.”

Meredith laughs again. “Seriously Maggie, it’s okay.” There’s another long beat of silence. Maggie and Meredith seem to be having a silent conversation and Alex is just standing there, feeling a little out of place, like he’s not really supposed to be there. But Meredith is still holding onto his hand tightly, and he can’t really bring himself to pull away. 

“Do you still need me to mediate the whole thing?” Maggie asks after a moment. She arches her brow and narrows her eyes, almost cartoonishly suspicious. 

“No” Meredith laughs, breathy, her voice softening, “I think we’re good, thanks.”

“Oh, good!” Maggie perks up, suddenly excited. “This is so good!” 

She plops down on the couch, drawing her legs up so that she’s sitting cross legged in the middle of it. “I wanna hear all about it! How it happened, and when. This is so great, we can all- oh” she quiets, looking at them. Meredith is back to laughing silently, but if Alex’s face is showing anything of what he’s feeling, it probably doesn’t look very welcoming. He loves Maggie, he does, and he’ll want to share the news with her at some point, but definitely not right now. 

They have too much to figure out for themselves still.

“You want me to leave, don’t you.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way” he tells her, speaking up for the first time, “we’ll tell you everything, just- not right now. You get that right?”

“Oh- of course!” She untangles her limbs and jumps up, “I’ll just- leave you guys to talk. I’m going to- I’m going to Jackson’s, to give you some space.”

“Maggie” Meredith pleads, “you don’t need to leave the house entirely.”

“No, Mer, it’s okay” she stops in the middle of putting on her shoes. She’s smiling, and reaches out to grab Meredith’s hand in hers, squeezing reassuringly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She grabs her jacket and her bag, shooting them one last smile before she moves for the door. Alex detaches himself from Meredith, and follows, holding onto the door as she steps out. “Tell Avery we’re gonna need to have words tomorrow.” He wants to be menacing, but Maggie just bursts out laughing, and with that she’s gone.

When he steps back into the living room, Meredith is studying him with an amused smirk on her face. “ _Have words?_ What are you, seventy?”

“Oh, shut up” he scoffs, “I can’t believe he ratted me out like this. It was just this morning!”

She’s laughing at him now, and he lets her, because he knows that there’s nothing he could say that would make the situation less funny to her, but mostly because he missed the way she could laugh. He missed being able to be with her like this. He forgets for a second there is nothing about tonight that is simply _like before_ , and he can see the exact moment the fact clicks for her too. Her laughter dies down, and they stare at each other for a long moment, silence stretching between them.

“So…” she tries, awkward. She’s staring at her feet, and he remembers right then all the bad feelings he still had up until the moment they walked through the door. The little Maggie interlude distracted him from it, the way Meredith held onto his hand almost enough to quiet the voices, put his mind at peace. But all of that has passed, and he still has no clue what any of today means.

“So” he echoes, resolute.

“Want a beer?”

He arches one eyebrow, studying her. He won’t let her avoid him, won’t let himself get distracted. But sometimes a beer is just a beer, and he needs something to do with his hands. “Sure.”

When she comes back, he’s already sitting on the couch, a little too stiff, considering this has been the house he’s been living in for the past ten years. But he’s nervous, and he can see it in her face too, the way she hands him the bottle and then sits with her leg curled under her, just far enough from him that he immediately notices. Or maybe it’s just that he’s hyper-aware of this kind of things lately. He wants her closer.

“Can I go first?” she asks nervously, wringing her fingers in her lap.

“Sure.”

“Maybe we should start with talking about today?” 

He snorts out a laugh. “Today when?” There are many things that happened today they will need to talk about, and he wants to make sure they’re not going to sweep stuff under the rug just because it’s easier to just talk about the good parts.

“At the hospital” she answers, serious. There’s a flicker of guilt in her eyes, and she turns her head to avoid his gaze. When she speaks, it’s quiet again. “That was not about you.” He thinks back to their conversation this morning, them screaming at each other and her storming off to get to her patient, _the guy_. She must see the look on his face, because she hurries to correct herself, “I mean, it was about _me_. I’ve been having a hard time- a hard time trying to figure out what was happening here.” She readjusts herself on the couch so that she’s facing him better, gestures between their bodies with her hand.

“Yeah, me too” he admits. It feels like such a big thing, finally getting the chance to say out loud all the things he has been thinking for a long time now. There’s a difference between confessing to Bailey in a dark room, or blurting out half truths to Avery and hoping they won’t ask too many questions; and saying everything to Meredith’s face. The words aren’t even a full confession, and he still feels like some sort of fifty pounds weight has been lifted off his chest.

“You too?” She’s genuinely surprised, and he can’t believe how blind she can be sometimes. “How long have you been feeling like this?”

All of a sudden, he feels defensive. He knew she was going to try and deflect, but he didn’t expect it to happen so soon. He narrows his eyes at her. “Weren’t you supposed to go first?”

“Alex, please” she pleads.

Alex thinks long and hard about what he wants to say. He worries that if he tells her the whole truth, he’ll scare her away. He realizes now this has been going on for way longer than he’s willing to admit to himself, and his answer can’t just be _for a really long time_. He’ll sound pathetic, but more than that he doesn’t want to make her feel bad about not reciprocating his feelings. “Promise you won’t freak out.”

She stifles a laugh at his words. “You know that does not make me want to not freak out. Are you being serious right now?” He glares at the way she’s still laughing, and that makes her stop, apologetic. He takes a big breath in, then speaks. 

“When you came to get me in jail, after DeLuca- that’s the first time I thought I wanted to kiss you.” He looks over at her, and she’s wide eyed in shock, just like he knew she would be, and he continues before she has the chance to cut him off, say anything that will drive him off course. “But that completely went away after that. And then... I don’t know, it was a lot of little things. The first time I said it out loud to anyone, that was- a little less than a year ago, I guess? Does that help?”

“Who did you tell it to?” She’s genuinely curious, with none of the disbelief he expected to see on her face. If anything, there’s some underlying guilt there.

“Bailey kinda forced it out of me.”

“Figures” she huffs, and her reaction sparks his curiosity. His question is silent, and she chuckles at his expression. “Richard has been shooting me these weird looks for months now. Did you really think she wouldn’t tell him? Ben Warren definitely knows too.”

_Oh, crap, that’s right._

He groans and drops his head. He had been so focused on keeping everything in, trying not to let anything show, that he didn’t think people might be coming up with their own conclusions. He hears her laughing, her hand coming up to touch his cheek to comfort him. He looks back up at her and a heavy silence fills the room again. It’s not awkward, but comfortable and warm and he lets himself lean against her palm, scooting a little closer to her. Their knees are touching, but there’s still plenty of space between them. Too much space. The content smile on her lips drops when he speaks up again. “Now you go.” She really thought she was getting away with it.

“I don’t think I should-”

“Mer” Alex scolds her, and there’s guilt painted all over her face when she throws her hands up in the air, the motion making her lose her balance on the leg she’s sitting on, widening the distance between their bodies again.

“I don’t want to make you feel bad!” she whines, eyes fixing into his. She’s surprised when he laughs, extending his hand to grab her by the elbow, bringing her back to the spot she was occupying before. Closer, he needs her to be closer. 

“I won’t feel bad. I know that wasn’t the same for you, I don’t expect it to be.”

“Because of Nathan?”

He has flashes of her from that time, when she was so happy but hiding it, the whole thing one big secret and him the only one privy to it, and how it used to tear up at his insides. “Yeah, because of that, but also... it’s fine if you figured it out today, I don’t really care.” He really doesn’t, the thought of her suffering the same dull pain he’s been feeling for months does nothing to make him feel better, he doesn’t care about being petty like that. He just needs her to be sure _now._ She looks away, sheepish, and an inkling of doubt rises up in his chest. “Wait, was it really today?”

“No, you asshole!” Meredith looks back surprised with an audible gasp, shoving at him lightly, going somber again as she speaks. “Just not… _one year ago._ ”

He was afraid of this happening, that she would feel bad for him. He needs her to know that he doesn’t blame her for any of it, that it’s not her fault she didn’t notice, he can’t have her think that he’s upset it took her longer. “That’s fine, Mer.”

She seems lost in thought again, and Alex waits for her to be ready. “I think I didn’t let myself think about it until the night we- the night that we kissed in the kitchen.” There’s a strange inflection in the way she says the word _kissed_ , like it feels weird to say, but she’s smiling into it too, and it’s so endearing he finds himself smiling too. “But if I’m being honest, it was before that. The night of the Harper Avery, probably.”

Alex doesn’t say anything to that: working its way down the back of the couch, his hand has found her shoulder and now he’s drawing circles there, his fingers playing with her hair. He was listening to her, but for a second he got distracted. “That was a great night” he muses, still focused on her hair, “I beat myself up for a week after that, wondering if I should have kissed you then.”

“I wanted you to” she confesses quietly, a whisper, and she’s smiling brightly when he looks up at her, and then the smile turns into a mocking grin. “That would have been one hell of a first kiss.”

“Hey” he pulls his hand back, offended. “Like the real one wasn’t?”

There’s no answer to that, just Meredith holding his gaze for what feels like forever, a knowing look on her face. Slowly, she scoots closer and closer, until she’s flush against his side and has her chin hovering just above his shoulder. It almost looks like she’s challenging him. “I didn’t say that.”

It’s so easy to just turn his head and kiss her. He marvels at how right it feels already, like they’ve done it enough that they’ve by now figured out each other’s tells, their needs. This is their third kiss and it already feels like they’ve been doing it all their lives.

Maybe it’s the comfort of the couch that puts him right at ease, or maybe it’s simply the fact that he gets to do this now, but he circles her waist with his arm, drawing her into him, turning a little so that they can face each other better, get closer, deepen the kiss. Meredith’s arms fly up to around his neck, pulling him into her and they start to lose balance, his weight almost making them both fall back into the couch. As a reflex, he tries to pull himself back up, and the force of the motion drags Meredith back with him, their chests colliding as she ends up falling into his lap.

She’s straddling him now, legs on either side of him and hands still tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck. She plunges into a kiss again, with enough passion that instinctively Alex’s hands go to her hips, trying to keep her in place and close, _closer_. She moans quietly and he almost blacks out, before he remembers.

_Wait, no._

He can’t do this again, let himself, let them both get swept by passion and forget everything else. If they go too far when things are still this unclear, and tomorrow morning she freaks out on him and changes her mind again, he’s not sure he’ll survive it. 

“Mer, stop” he pulls away gasping, “we can’t do this now, we still have to-” He looks up at her, long lashes and bee stung lips and she looks so perfect he can’t help himself, drops a another quick kiss on her lips, She chases after him immediately, still wanting more, jutting her bottom lip out in a pout, and he has to narrow his eyes at her, a warning. “We really aren’t done talking, Mer.”

Her face changes then, she breathes out a defeated sigh but nods, sliding off of his lap. She doesn’t quite get off him completely, sits by his side as close as she can get, one of her legs still draped over his. She studies him for a second before nodding again. “You’re right, let’s talk.” She’s smiling back at him sweetly and he loses his train of thought for a second, hand dropping to the thigh laying in his lap before he can stop himself. He’s been trying to get her closer the entire night, and now that there isn’t really any more room between them, he finds out he can’t quite think properly like this.

“Alex? You were saying?” She jokes, pulling him back to earth. Right, talking.

“I need to know how this will work” he blurts out, and he feels her stiffen against his side. She’s about to get defensive, he knows, and he wishes he could have chosen better words.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want this to be something? Or is it just an attraction thing, or-” he’s rambling, losing every inch of rationality he still had left, to the point that she must notice, because she cuts him off with a snicker.

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious Mer, this is important.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she bursts, and then immediately regrets it. She goes dark again, averting her eyes from his pointed stare. She’s picking at a piece of lint on the couch cushion, and it takes a second before she speaks up again. “Why do you think I freaked out so bad after the last time? When this blows up in our faces, I can’t-”

“You think this is going to blow up in our faces?”

“When has anything ever worked out how we expected?” she asks, like she thinks he’s stupid, and she looks sad too. It breaks his heart, and he squeezes her thigh reassuringly. He doesn’t say he’s had a million of similar thoughts in the past few months. One of them needs to stay level-headed, even if it’s just pretend.

“Listen” she speaks again, “I kinda have a confession to make.” She braces herself, takes a big breath in before she says “I lied before.”

He perks up at that, straightens on the couch, readying himself for whatever it is she’s about to tell him. From her tone, her words, that does not bode well, and he feels panic rising in his chest. He really thought he could relax, that this was going well, that he was getting what he wan-

“After I was attacked… I had a thing for you for a while.”

_She what?_

Alex’s stunned into silence, her words ringing in his ears for a long moment, before he bursts into a barking, disbelieving, relieved laugh. “You had a _thing_ for me? We are not fifteen, Mer.”

“Shut up!” She squeals, her cheeks going pink and her eyes crinkling with embarrassment. “You know what I mean. When I woke up, the first thing I remember seeing was- you were there. And you were still there after a week, and after three.”

“So, your thing for me was a post traumatic stress crush?” he mocks her still, and he feels a little bad when he can’t make her smile. She’s really serious, and he clears his throat trying to hide his shame. “I’m sorry, go on.”

“Will you stop? It wasn’t a stress crush. I guess I… I had been feeling very lonely for a long time, and a terrible thing happened when I was just starting to feel like things would be okay again. You know I was having a really hard time with all of that and you… you were the only thing that made me feel good about myself, and I was never really that scared when you were in the room with me.”

Alex thinks he might have forgotten how to breathe. He can’t really do anything but listen, while everything he knew about his life gets turned upside down, apparently. Not even his life _now_ , but his life from three years ago, when he had a girlfriend and he still thought everything was normal, when he still felt like his life made sense. It’s disconcerting to find out he’s been so spectacularly wrong for so long.

“Dr Carr kept giving me grief about it. I hate that he was right” she jokes, her laugh shaky, and the stretched smile he offers probably isn’t enough to pretend everything is fine. She was just giving him crap for keeping his feelings hidden for the past year, while she was keeping _this_ a secret?

“You never said anything” he chokes out, when he can eventually find his voice.

“You were with Jo” Meredith reminds him. Her tone is calm, but he can hear the offence underneath, like she’s trying to defend herself from some kind of invisible accusation.

He thinks back to that time, wonders how he would have reacted to the news. He might have been with Jo, but everything was so muddled, possibly already irreparably ruined: he was hurt at her turning down his proposal, but still wanted to make things work with her; he was balancing all of that with Meredith’s recovery, feeling like he needed to step up and take care of her and her family, constantly torn between the two. It takes him a second to process, but then he remembers. “You told me to go back to her. Why did you do that if you had this...thing?”

“Would you have left her for me?” The question is simple, and still he’s at a loss for an answer. The silence stretches for too long, he can’t quite meet her eyes, and he feels her exhale, her breath tickling his cheek. She doesn’t sound upset, or defeated, just… validated, maybe a little sad. “That’s what I thought.”

“You should have told me. We should have talked about it.”

“Why, so that you could have told me it wasn’t the same for you? I couldn’t bear the thought of you disappearing from my life, not then.”

He looks back up at her now, because her words provoke a surge of something bubbling up in his chest, insult and incredulity and annoyance at the fact that she may think so little of him, that her confession could have ever driven him away from her. He says none of it, his words dying in his throat when he sees her face and she looks miserable. She’s not actually talking about back then, is she. So he says this instead.

“And now?” She meets his eyes at that, a little confused and a lot curious, hopeful, and he can’t help but smile at her, his hand squeezing at her from its place on her leg. “Is that why you are still so freaked out now?”

He’s sure there’s some degree of hopefulness in his voice that she’ll say _no, I’m not scared anymore_ , like they’re in some sort of romantic comedy and this is _the moment_ , the moment everything will click into place and they’ll just kiss, silently agree on everything still left unsaid, be happy ever after, the screen fading to black. 

That’s all crap, of course, and he tries to remind himself that he never believed in romantic comedies and she sure as hell never did either. In real life, this is not the moment things click into place, but the moment she pulls away from him, scooting on the couch until there’s a reasonable distance between them again, huffing in annoyance, and squares him up, a warning in the way she says his name. “Alex, please…”

He never believed in romantic comedies, but he’s so tired of all this, of them psyching themselves out of things they want: they both did it all their lives with other people, it would be so easy to do it to each other this time too. Suddenly, this is the moment he decides he’s done with all of it.

“No, Mer, not _please_ , listen” he cuts her off, and waits until he’s sure she’s listening, her eyes fixed into his and wide, like a deer caught in headlights. She looks so scared of what’s about to happen, and he wants to reach out to her and smooth the crease on her forehead, relax the tightness of her jaw.

_No_ , he reprimands himself, _do not get distracted right now._

“I am not freaking out about this” he starts, eyes trained on her, looking for signs she might be starting to let go of the nervous tension. There aren’t any. “I am not freaking out about this, it’s been a while since I’ve stopped fighting it. I realize I’ve had more time than you to come to terms with it, and that’s fine if you still need some time to think things through, but I believe you should do that having all the information.”

“And what is that?” she whispers, so low he almost doesn’t catch it, even in the quiet house and across the few feet that separate them.

“What do you need to know?” He wants to be helpful, make this easier for her, and he knows his voice has gone soft again and he has to remind himself not to lose his resolve, not right now.

“I guess… all of it?” she’s more sure now, her voice steadier. He studies her for a long moment, and she stares back, waiting. Alex takes a deep breath in, and speaks.

“Okay, uhm- okay. In the spirit of being honest, right? Everything you said before, about how you felt after you were attacked… I get that. I feel the same. Something terrible happened to me- well, I made something terrible happen to myself, actually, and you were right there the whole time. Mer, I lost my job, my relationship, I thought I was going to _prison_ , and you never left my side.” She’s smiling at him sweetly, and he can see she’s starting to relax again. Maybe this will go better than he hoped for. “And then I started to realize… that was not something new. You’ve been doing this, taking care of me and whipping me into shape, for as long as I can remember. You’re the first one who really took a chance on me, and I’m not saying I realized I’ve been feeling like this since intern year, because it’s not like that, but… when I think about it, it makes sense, you know? In the grand scheme of things, there really isn’t any other place I could have ended up in but here.”

He feels lighter, like those words had been physically been weighing on his shoulders, but Meredith’s not smiling anymore, panic starting to creep up back on her face. He reaches out with his hand, and she flinches away a little, evident enough for him to stop the movement mid-air. 

“I don’t have things figured out from here, but I just really need you to know- I am not going to- I would like for this to work, for real” Alex stumbles over his words a little, trying to fix whatever it is that he said and made her scared, before he gets a sudden burst of confidence. “It’s not just attraction, and you know it, or we would have just banged it out years ago and been done with it.” He wants to laugh at how crass and stupid that sounds, but she looks like she’s about to have a heart attack, and the laugh dies in his throat. “It’s not just attraction, or that we both feel lonely, it’s... We’ve always fit, Mer, and it’s fine we didn’t realize it until now because maybe it wasn’t our time, but I think it is now. You made me a better person, all those years ago, and you still do that everyday. Most days, I can’t stand anyone who isn’t you, and then I get to come _home_ and you’re here, and I would never have thought my life could be so easy, and you know I lo-”

“No!” she cries out then, jumping up from the couch like something stung her. She’s staring down at him, eyes full of tears. She wants to look fierce, and hard, but Alex can see the surface crumbling, her lip trembling and the tears starting to roll down her cheek. She looks almost heartbroken, and if he didn’t know her so well he’d say nothing about her reaction made sense, but he instantly realizes what this is about before she even speaks. “Please don’t say it.”

“Mer, I-”

“No. Please.”

Somehow, he expected this. He knows how hard it is for her, to be actually confronted with change, with the notion she has to let go of herself and her past at some point, if she wants to move forward. He doesn’t take it personally. She’s put the coffee table between them now, still standing in the middle of the room, looking down at him. Warning him of something. Pleading. _Please don’t turn our entire lives upside down._

He doesn’t stand, doesn’t move from his place on the couch, but stares at her until he’s sure she’s ready to hear him out. It takes her a second longer, but her expression changes, and she doesn’t need to nod for him to get that she’s ready now.

“Look, Mer, there’s no point in me saying I don’t love you, because I do.” She sucks in a sharp breath, but doesn’t move from her spot. He knows she wants to bolt, but she won’t. “But the reality of it is that… I have always loved you anyway, there’s nothing you did that made it happen, because it has always been there.” He smiles when he sees her shoulders relax just a bit, and his next words come out softer, a promise. “I won’t stop loving you if you don’t want to be with me, I swear to you, that is never gonna happen. Do you understand that?”

Meredith nods, tentative, like she’s afraid to move too fast. Her eyes are still trained on him and she still hasn’t said a word.

“All I’m saying is- maybe there’s a different kind of love we’ve been denying ourselves of because- I don’t know why, because we are scared?” He can’t help himself, breaking out in a grin. “Or because we’re both world-class, self destructive idiots, most likely, but still.”

The fraction of a second when she goes from teary-eyed, panicked Meredith to fully-laughing Meredith is probably the best moment of his entire life. He gets to see all of it, the moment a spark lights up behind her eyes and her face splits into a smile, and the laugh that bubbles in her chest before breaking free, her hand catching herself when she covers her mouth with it.

He knows he’s just finished telling her his love has always been there, but this is probably the second he _actually_ falls in love.

“We really are self destructive idiots, aren’t we?” she jokes, voice watery, but soft again, like she’s starting to let go of all the tension. Alex just nods and laughs quietly, letting himself fall back into the couch, more relaxed just by her reaction and the world-shattering realization that he is _in love_ with Meredith.

She’s standing nervously on the other side on the coffee table, still, her leg bouncing nervously as she pulls at her fingers, bottom lip between her teeth. He waits for her to be done thinking.

Once again, he is grateful for being able to read her so well, because he gets to see the exact moment she makes up her mind: she makes herself stand a little straighter, shoulders squared, chin up. Her lip falls from where she’d been worrying at it and she fixes her eyes into his: there’s no tears, no worry, no sadness, just a new glint of resolve and… happiness?

“Okay” she announces, and he’s been so focused on reading her body language that he almost misses it, isn’t sure he’s heard her right. “Okay” she says again, more sure of herself, and Alex’s heart bursts open.

“Okay?” he repeats, a little awestruck and unsure, and Meredith’s smile grows wider, finally taking the few steps around the table that bring her back to the couch. She stands in front of him, gazing down at him with a smile.

“I think you’re right. I think we should give it a chance.”

Alex’s body reacts before his mind can. She squeals when he grabs her at her hips and pulls her down to him, their lips crashing together and he’s pretty sure in the collision she’s elbowed him in the stomach but he doesn’t care, because he gets to kiss her now, kiss her until they’re both out of breath and a little bit longer after that, until she’s gasping for air inches from his face and he really doesn’t care, mouth latching onto her neck and leaving kisses there too, up and down her collarbone and jawline until she’s breathless again and panting in his ear and all the blood in his body starts to rush downwards and…

...he really should stop for a second.

He slows himself down, trailing light kisses up her jaw until he can reach her mouth again, and kisses her there, long and slow and deep, taking his time with it, reveling in the absolute earth-shattering realization that he gets to do this now, apparently with her complete blessing. He feels lightheaded, and he knows the lack of oxygen is just a small part of that.

When they part her eyes flutter open, long lashes brushing her cheek while she slowly regains her senses. She’s flushed, her lips swollen, and he has a brief thought of if she looks this perfect and beautiful now, what is it gonna happen after they get to do more than kissing. He stops the moan that forms in his chest before it comes out, and just smiles timidly at her when she finally focuses her gaze on him. “Hey.”

“Hi” she smiles back, brightly, and there’s the final confirmation he was waiting for: there’s none of the doubt, fear, indecisiveness that had been there all night, even at the bar, or when she kissed him in the car. She’s completely open now, sure of herself, and he always thought that was her best look on her, but he had never realized it could be even better when she was straddling his legs and finally _his_.

“So” she continues, dropping her hands on his chest and playing with the top button of his shirt, “I know we are not done talking, and I promise I am not chickening out, but- can this be enough for tonight? It was a long day and I’m exhausted.” She smiles, a little guilty, and Alex instinctively goes to recap her day in his head: today she was in a three hours surgery for a patient she spent the rest of the day making googly eyes at. Six-hours-ago-Alex would still be furious at her, and at the guy, and he can feel a tiny pang of jealousy rising in his chest to the point that he has to tell himself to _give it a rest, man, you won._

_Ha-ha._

“Sure, of course” he tells her, patting her lightly on her upper thigh to gesture her to move. When she doesn’t, he looks up at her confused. “What?”

“You know this is not me freaking out, right?” Meredith tells him, serious, and the urgency in her voice almost makes him laugh.

“Yeah, Mer, I know” he chuckles, and reaches up to give her a quick peck before attempting to push her up again. Districating themselves from one another is a little awkward, and when they’re finally standing in front of each other, a little closer than usual, she giggles nervously at him before quickly ducking away.

*

They go through the familiar motions of turning in for the night, her flicking off the lights in the kitchen while he locks the front door. They walk upstairs together in silence, their hands brushing as they walk up the steps. When they get to his room, he stops for a second, suddenly uncertain on what to do. She doesn’t notice right away that he’s not following her, going all the way to the end of the hallway before she realises, turning back to see where he’s gone.

It’s almost comical, mirroring each other with their hand on the doorknob, staring across the empty space. In the semi darkness, he can’t make out her expression, can’t guess what she’s thinking, and it’s unsettling, the old feeling of doubt that still gets to him even now that he should be _sure_ about how she feels.

“Are you seriously sleeping in your room? Tonight?” Her voice echoes in the silent house, almost mocking him, and Alex exhales the breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. He’s beside her in just a few strides, and now that she’s closer he can see her better, the glint in her eyes and the tiny smile that wants to mock him for being so stupid. He says nothing, rolls his eyes at her and sighs when she laughs, opening the door to her room so that they can both slip inside.

The door clicks shut behind him, and it almost makes him jump out of his skin. It’s the strangest feeling, being here with her, completely normal and familiar while at the same time totally new. It’s something they’ve done a million times before, but never with all these expectations, _promises_ , hanging between them.

The actual getting-ready-for-bed part is done quickly, in silence, taking turns in the bathroom and changing into pajamas, and that calms him a little, going through the motions of something he is used to, taking comfort in the fact that maybe some things didn’t have to change at all, now that everything has. Eventually, they both get under the covers and Meredith flicks off the light on her bedside table, drowning them into total darkness, and he realises the monumental lie he has been telling himself.

Nothing about this feels the same.

Alex shifts uncomfortably in bed, reverting to his usual position, flat on his back, from when he was still trying to police his feelings and thought it would be safer than facing her. He is painfully aware of the irony of it all.

_This is so stupid._

“Alex” her voice calls out for him in the darkness, and all of a sudden he can’t move, can’t speak out, his whole body frozen in place with the realization that this is not like the other nights. _This is so stupid_ , he thinks again, and he feels like a teenager spending the night with his girlfriend for the first time. “Alex, you don’t need to stay all the way over there.”

Her voice is light and clear, the hint of softness making it so painfully intimate that he feels like he can’t breathe, the weight of the events of the night crashing down onto him all at once. “I know, it’s just-”

“-odd, I know” she offers, and Alex feels the mattress dip slightly as she moves, the faint sound of her hand moving under the sheets, grabbing his and tugging. “Maybe we just take this slow.”

He lets her guide him and pull until he has to scoot closer, and now that his eyes have adjusted to the dark he can see her, laying on her side and looking at him through her lashes, a timid smile on her face. She pulls at him until they’re so close that both their heads are resting on the same pillow, and Alex’s hand falls to her hip, thumb stroking the narrow sliver of skin where her t-shirt has ridden up. Meredith stretches her body against his, like a cat, and when she stills her foot is tucked between his calves, their legs intertwined.

Alex thinks back to when they were residents, and he used to catch Meredith and Yang and Izzie (or sometimes O’Malley, which he found even weirder), sprawled on Meredith’s bed all night, talking or studying or straight-up falling asleep like that, in various states of entangled limbs. He made fun of them for it, and he legitimately thought that was lame, when he was still so used to being alone that he wasn’t even jealous.

It feels so strange, remembering a time when he felt like that, and at the same time experiencing _this_ , and all the various degrees of intimacy in between that map out their decade long relationship.

When he finally got accepted into the group, and he used to be the one to get take-out for them all to eat in bed.

When Meredith used to kick Jo out of his bed to talk to him, and when he liked to end his day dropping by into her room to talk about whatever surgery they scrubbed in for recently.

The six months straight when Amelia was in a fight with Hunt so Meredith and Alex slept in the same bed every night.

The day she saved Megan Hunt’s life and she fell asleep crying in his arms.

It’s all coming down crashing all at once, his past and his present mixing in his head until he’s not even sure what feelings he’s feeling right now. It’s a nice metaphor for how he feels about Meredith, their friendship and their love for each other blending together to the point that Alex doesn’t know anymore where one ends and the other begins, past and present and _future_ staring down at him, all from Meredith’s curious eyes.

“Are you tired?” She whispers, her breath tickling his skin across the few inches that separate them. 

“No” he answers, tone matching hers. He’s too riled up from the whirlwind of the day, going from thinking he was going to lose her to having her wrapped into his arms in less than twenty four hours. 

He has to swallow a surprised moan when Meredith kisses him, her body aligning against his even closer that she already was. Her arm sneaks under his to pull him closer, hand splayed between his shoulder blades, and Alex reacts on instinct, opening his mouth against hers and hand flying up to cup her face. The kiss is passionate, but slow and languid, like they’re taking their time. He mostly lets Meredith lead, matching her intensity and just reveling in the absolute miracle that is this moment, dark and quiet and full of everything he thought he was never going to have.

It’s so different from their kiss in the kitchen. That had felt desperate, hurried, when they both felt like they were going on stolen time, like they both knew, deep down, that once they stopped they would never be able to get to that point again. That day, they were both too scared of what it would mean.

Meredith whimpers into his mouth, breathy and short, and Alex feels like someone has charged an electric current through him. He plunges forward, kissing her harder and lifting himself up onto his elbow. He’s half on top of her, hovering above her face, and she doesn’t say anything, just kisses him and threads her fingers into his short hair. She tugs a bit, pulling him in, and he loses balance so now he’s on top of her, one of her legs between his and the full lenght of his body flush against her. She smiles into the kiss, he can tell by the way the corner of her lips he kisses on his way to her jaw is turning upwards, and he wants to smile too.

He fumbles with the covers to get them out of the way, immediately relaxes when he can feel her body under his, their clothes the only offending pieces of fabric separating them. He places a quick kiss to the hollow of her neck, and then snakes a hand under her shirt. It reminds him of their first kiss in the kitchen, the way the same gesture sparked such intense feelings that he actually cursed. Meredith laughs shakily under him, and he doesn’t even need to look at her to know she’s had the same exact thought. She’s going to be unbearable, isn’t she.

“Meredith, I swear to god…”

“What?” She laughs, her fake pout and big eyes mocking him as she strokes his cheek. “You’re not going to start swearing every time you grope me? I kind of liked that.”

“You did?” Alex growls, eyes never leaving hers. He grinds his hips into hers, once, and her mouth falls open, mocking pout quickly disappearing. “I can think of a lot worse profanities I can make _you_ say. Maybe I’ll kind of like that too.” She gasps at his words, stunned into silence, and he smirks into their next kiss. _Two can play this game, Mer._

It’s a blur of hastily removed clothes after that, skin on skin and his lips kissing her anywhere he can reach. Alex’s had sex with a lot of women in his life, women he’s just met for a night, and women he cared about, and even women he was actually in love with, but still this feels like a whole new thing, and it baffles him how he can be this deliriously happy, how is it possible that the first time they do this there isn’t any awkwardness, limbs getting in the way or hushed _sorry_ s as they try to figure out each other’s bodies.

It’s perfect, painfully so, the way they seem to just understand each other without a word, how their bodies just fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Time seems to stop, give them all the time in the world to be together like this, and for once there’s no kids, or sisters, or some crisis, interrupting their moment. He looks down at her (and at some point she looks down at him), and he’s just speechless from the realization that he could never have imagined ending up here, like this, not in a million years.

*

Time has seemed to stop, but it also skips incredibly fast, and all of a sudden dawn is peaking out from outside the window, and they haven’t slept a minute the entire night, and for the life of him Alex can’t convince himself that is actually a bad thing.

They’re back to how they started the night, somehow, on their sides facing each other and with Meredith’s feet trapped between Alex’s legs. He’s holding onto her waist with both arms, hands resting on the small of her back, and he’s just watching her, the lines around her eyes and the pink color of her still swollen lips. She’s doing her best to keep awake, but her eyelids keep fluttering with every exhale, and she looks so adorably open that Alex can’t help but kiss her quickly, laughing quietly when it shakes her out of her near-sleeping state.

“You know I love you, right?” The words tumble out of his mouth before he even realizes the urge behind them, and he watches Meredith smile, closing her eyes for a second, blissful. 

“You said that already” she murmurs, sleep threatening at her words. He pinches her side, trying to keep her alert. Suddenly, he feels very important that she _knows_ , no matter the fact that he’s said it already on the couch, or how many times he showed it to her in her bed. Suddenly, he’s afraid she’s going to not believe him.

“I know, but I need you to know-”

“Alex” his name is spoken quietly, her eyes closed again, but she’s scooted closer to him and she has a hand on his face, stroking his cheek with chilled fingers. “I know.” 

The alarm clock on her bedside table starts blasting its offending siren, and Meredith groans her disappointment as she rolls away to turn it off, but Alex doesn’t really register any of it.

He told her he loves her.

She knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand.... this is it. next chapter is going to be the epilogue (with a bit of a surprise twist), and then we're done. honestly i never thought i could actually do it.
> 
> i loved this chapter and i actually teared up several times writing/rereading/editing it. i hope you'll love it as much as i did.
> 
> as always, leave me a comment or come find me on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com) to make my day!
> 
> thanks for reading, ily xx


	10. epilogue

A long time ago, Meredith was supposed to get married. She didn’t want a big wedding, neither did Derek, surely not one like this. But it started as a favour to Izzie, who was sick, miserable, and restless, and needed something to take her mind off of the thing that was eating at her from the inside out. 

So Meredith went along with it, for the sake of her sick friend and her poor, miserable, restless fiancé who, in some surprising turn of events, she had learned to call friend too. But Izzie got worse fast, and eventually it became painfully obvious that she would never make it to _her own_ wedding, so Meredith and Derek had made what had then seemed like the only logical choice. They gave the wedding up (the one that they didn’t want in the first place anyway) and gifted it to the other couple.

After all, the whole thing had only been a favour to Izzie from the beginning.

Meredith had stood beside her _other_ friend, the fiancé, married him off, and as she stood next to him at the altar, in the back of her mind she had realised that she had given up her wedding for _him_ , more than for Izzie. Meredith had been watching him for weeks, running himself ragged, terrified of losing his love, and she remembers thinking she never wanted to have to go through that, ever. So, she had given him her wedding, hoping it could be at least _something_.

*

It’s some years later and, in another surprising turn of events, that same friend is now sitting on her- no, _their_ unmade bed, shirt untucked and a tie in each hand. “Do we really have to go to this thing?” He’s whining, his annoyed tone so familiar it doesn’t even get a rise out of her anymore.

“Alex, we do. It’s April’s wedding! Come on, we like April.”

He gives her a pointed look that means _when have we ever liked April_ , and the worst part of her wants to laugh at it but she stifles herself, ignoring his comment and covering the short distance from the bathroom mirror to the bed to stand in front of him, snatching the better tie from his hand with an annoyed huff. He seems unfazed by her mood, just parts his legs slightly until there’s enough room for him to drag her closer, hands gently pulling at her hips. Through her robe, she can feel his warm breath on her stomach and the press of his palms on her sides, stroking her waist as he looks up at her. Her breath catches in her throat a little and she has to close her eyes against the feeling.

She’s still getting used to this.

“I am serious, Mer” he whines again, “she already tried this once! I feel like you shouldn’t force people to dress up for the same wedding, _twice_.”

She laughs at that, and Alex rewards her with a grin, before his face turns serious, and he’s looking at her in a way that makes her blush. It’s adoring, and just the tiniest bit dirty, and she can’t believe she’s eliciting a reaction like that just by walking around in her bathrobe. It makes her self-conscious, and giddy at the same time. She raises her hands to unfold the collar of his shirt, loops his tie around his neck, purposefully avoiding his intense gaze. He squeezes her hip where he is still holding onto her, calling for her attention.

“What?” she indulges him, busying herself into working the tie into a knot.

“What are you thinking about?” A soft question, his fingers dancing over the fabric of her robe.

Meredith has to think about it for a second, and Alex doesn’t say anything, patiently waiting for her to be ready. “I guess it is kind of nice that April and Matthew found each other in the end” she ponders, looking somewhere above his shoulder. “That everything that happened somehow brought them back to one another again.”

She feels the same way about the two of them, but she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say that she’s thought about this, _them_ , constantly in the last two months, considered if it is a good idea, if it makes sense. She asked herself if they’re doing this just because it’s easy: not having to learn about the other person, or open themselves up to be discovered; years of friendship and drama and tragedies having already done all the heavy lifting for them instead.

But then again, maybe that’s exactly the point: they _have_ done the hard part already, gotten to know each other, just over the span of ten years instead of a couple of months of dating, like normal people would do. They had needed those years, to learn and love other people and go through all the terrible and beautiful things they did, to get to the point where they are now, where they, unexpectedly, found each other in the end.

Like April and Matthew.

She is silent for a long moment, considering all of this, still looking over his shoulder instead of at him, when his voice pulls her out of her thoughts. “You’re right, it is nice…” he says, and she bows her head to look down at him, her blonde hair falling from her shoulder, a curtain shielding them from the rest of the world. Their eyes lock, and she finds there’s complete understanding there. Maybe he didn’t go through the same thought process as she did, but she knows, somehow, that he’s thinking the same things she is, that they have reached the same conclusion. 

She never has to worry about them not being on the same page about the important stuff.

“…but I’m still not buying them a second wedding gift” he finishes, and Meredith rolls her eyes at his neverending grumpiness, wants to shove him back until he falls back on the bed but, before she can even raise her hand to his shoulder, a loud _thump_ comes from downstairs, followed by a beat of dead silence and then a piercing cry.

They groan in unison. Alex dropping his head on her stomach with a sigh of frustration and she chuckles, her fingers threading in the fine hair at the nape of his neck, almost like a reflex, drawing soothing circles there. Because she is still standing between his legs, when he eventually pushes himself up from the bed his body aligns flush against hers, chests touching. He’s not much taller than her, and they’re so close that she can feel his breath in her ear. Alex looks at her, eyes dark, and grins a little at her blushing cheeks, like he’s read her mind.

“Do you mind?” Meredith mumbles, and when she tries to step away she finds he’s still holding onto her hips, keeping her close. He’s still looking at her like _that_ , and it’d be so easy to push him back into the bed and curl up against him, steal a few moments together and ignore everything else. But they’re running late as it is, and there’s kids that need to be attended to, so she steels herself, looks at him with a little more resolve. “I still have to do my makeup.”

Alex makes a big show out of dragging his hand upwards, taking a strand of hair and brushing it behind her ear, fingers lingering on the column of her neck, making her shiver. “Sure” he concedes, eventually, stepping away from his space between her and the bed. “But you should move it along, or we’re gonna be late.”

“I thought you didn’t even wanna go!” she calls after him, laughing, the tension from moments ago already dissipating.

“Shut up” is the mumbled answer she gets when he’s already out the door, and she smiles to herself before glancing at the clock and realizing that yes, they are definitely going to be late.

*

There’s a lot of things you can say about April Kepner, but that she’s a sloppy planner is definitely not one of them. 

The wedding venue looks beautiful. It’s just outside the city, surrounded by greenery, and there are flowers, white and yellow, wrapped around the banisters of the little cobblestone steps leading to the ceremony area; and arranged in the big vases at the centre of the reception tables. Meredith spots Jackson, a few feet away, bent over and holding Harriet’s little hands in his as he helps her take tentative steps back and forth along the aisle. He looks up, meets her eyes, and they share a smile as a silent greeting before the girl trips on her own feet, and his full focus gets pulled back to his needing daughter. 

“See, I told you” Alex, appearing at her side, takes her out of her contemplation of the scene in front of them. “No one’s here yet, we weren’t running late.”

“We _are_ late, we’re just the only ones that didn’t get lost on the way here” she reminds him, and he huffs. Bailey, propped on his hip, looks at her through sleep-heavy eyelids, his head resting on Alex’s shoulder. He fell asleep on the ferry ride over, and he’s still, slowly, in the process of waking up. Meredith had considered the idea of leaving him to the babysitter, along with Ellis, but the truth is that, for some reason, her son has been harboring a bit of a crush on April for years now, and he had kicked and screamed at the idea of missing the day. Case in point, he should start on it right about…

“Can we go say hi to April?”

...now.

“I think April is pretty busy now, sweetheart” she tells him, rubbing circles on his back and smiling gently. “Maybe this is not the right time.” His eyes widen, now suddenly more alert, and she’s already beating herself up when his bottom lip starts quivering. This was not a great idea.

“They probably wouldn’t let you see her anyway, buddy” Alex comes to her rescue, shooting her an amused glance before turning to the boy. Bailey is now sitting upright, his full attention on Alex. “Boys are not allowed in the bride’s room on her wedding day.”

“But I wanted to say hi to April” Bailey’s whining again, but at least now it’s with a little less conviction. 

“Do you want to go check out Matthew’s changing room?” Alex tries again, and this time it’s Meredith that grins at the way he and her son are looking at each other, partners in crime. “We can be with the other guys for a while. Only boys allowed.”

Bailey seems to think on it for a second, not really sure if that is really his best option. Eventually he nods vigorously, letting himself fall against Alex’s shoulder again, and burying his face in the crook of his neck. In the distance, there’s faint voices getting louder and louder until Amelia, Owen, and their confusing new little family appear on the terrace above them.

“Okay, then” Alex speaks up, trying to get Meredith’s attention again, bumping his free hip against hers. “I’ll go do this, and we’ll come find you after.” His voice lowers, drawing his head closer to hers, conspiratorially. “Maybe your son will fight the groom for Kepner’s hand and this can really come full circle.”

Meredith laughs, fully, and he follows, his grin staying on his face even when the laughter dies down. He’s closer now, has taken a step forward while swaying and bouncing Bailey on his hip, and now they’re almost chest to chest, face to face. His eyes are bearing into hers, dark, and it reminds her so much of the moment in the bedroom, that morning, that she almost wants to take a step back. She’s still getting used to this, the feeling of him getting this close with that look in his eyes, like he wants to eat her alive. It does things to her, the proximity, she gets weak in the knees and blushes at the most random, inappropriate times. She feels like a teenager with her first boyfriend, except she isn’t a teenager anymore, she’s a grown woman and mother of three, and this isn’t just a boyfriend. This is Alex. 

_Alex._

Her best friend Alex, who she has leaned on over the years more and more until she realized she doesn’t seem to be able to do without him; who she gave away at the altar once, and somehow ended in a relationship with, ten years later. Meredith’s still trying to wrap her head around it, around the fact that it could have been so effortlessly easy, to get what she’s always wanted. Or even, at the root of it all, how is it that all that she wanted was Alex and she didn’t even notice.

His eyes haven’t left hers, and his happy grin has turned into an all-knowing smirk: he’s surely seeing everything going on in her head. He takes another discreet step forward, hiding it under the pretence of swaying to lull Bailey back to sleep and now, if she wanted, she could tilt her head up and they would be nose to nose. 

“Everything good?” he barely whispers, his voice full of concern and love and everything in between, and for the millionth time in the past two months Meredith’s floored by the realisation that this is what her life finally, actually is. That ten years ago she would have found the notion of being this attracted to Alex Karev absolutely preposterous, and yet now it has become the thing that made her life click into place.

She opens her mouth to answer, but Amelia’s loud “Mer!” comes before she can speak a single word. The sound startles both of them into pulling away, and Meredith instantly misses his warmth. She files that too under things that should feel weird, but don’t.

“Okay, we’re going to see if we can find the groom” Alex tells her, in a normal tone now, the low breathy voice he reserves for her gone. “Zola’s somewhere, running around with Sophia. You’ll come find us if you need anything?” 

She nods, and there’s a beat of indecision in his step, like he’s figuring out if he should reach forward again and kiss her, or something. Maybe trying to decide if that’s an okay thing to do, now that they’re in front of other people. He reaches forward quickly, stamping a kiss on her cheek before immediately turning away. The awkward moment lasts a fraction of a second, and Meredith barely catches the almost-guilty expression on his face as he’s walking away, and at the exact same moment Amelia steps in the space behind her.

“Hey! I thought we were late, where is everybody?” her sister asks, oblivious to the moment she interrupted, her usual level of frazzled and frantic energy showing in her quick hand gestures and the way her hair is a little out of place.

“Bad GPS link. They all went to the wrong location.”

“Oh, wow. Owen never uses GPS. He is like a walking GPS, whereas I can get lost on the way to the bathroom” Amelia immediately starts to ramble, and Meredith tunes her out at the first mention of Owen. She’s long given up on understanding what the deal between the two of them is. 

She’s also too focused on Alex’s back, retreating up the stairs and toward the house, Bailey still hanging on his hip. She’s still reeling from the way they separated: was he really going to kiss her, and why didn’t he? Is she upset that he didn’t do it? As much as everything about them still feels new, she rationally knows that’s not really the truth: they’ve been together for a little over two months now (if you don’t count the decade long friendship that came before), and they’ve definitely done more than just kissing, so she really doesn’t know what this sudden panic is stemming from.

They haven’t been broadcasting the entire thing, not exactly, both of them silently agreeing that they’re done with the drama that comes with everyone feeling entitled to get involved in their lives. They both lived through it, people hyper-aware of every little aspect of their past relationships, and neither one of them cares for a repeat.

They haven’t made it a secret either, of course, but simply kept themselves to the house and the immediate circle of the family, enjoying this strange new found normalcy, figuring out how this relationship will work, and if people figure something out along the way, that’s fine too.

So, this is new territory, attending an event as a couple for the first time, with all their friends around, and having to navigate everything that comes with it. April had found Meredith in the attendings’ lounge, a couple months prior, a soft smile playing at her lips when she asked her if she and Alex would be coming to the wedding _together_ , and Meredith, caught by surprise, had said yes before she could think too much about it. April had been really gracious about it and made no comment (she looked pleased, even), but Meredith still went home that night feeling unsettled. Alex did his best to calm her nerves, but from the little side-dance of I-don’t-really-know-if-I-can-kiss-you he did earlier, she’s starting to feel like maybe the whole thing has gotten to him too.

“Meredith, you okay?”

“No” Meredith swallows, feeling uncharacteristically shaken up. “I feel less okay than I have in a long time.” Because that’s the truth: it’s hard, when something new comes along, and you’ve been keeping it to yourself, protected, and suddenly it comes the time to show it to the world. She has felt so good these past few months, but now that she’s faced with the opportunity to share it… it’s scary as hell.

“Oh my god” Amelia whisper-shouts, mouth agape, gaze flitting between Meredith and Alex’s retreating back. “I knew it!”

Meredith looks at her, confused. She’s not sure she’ll ever completely understand her sister, and her sudden burst of excitement is already annoying her. “Knew what?”

“You're in love with Alex!” Amelia informs her, excited. “It's okay, I am not judging, I have suspected it for years!” The meaning of her words finally clicks, and Meredith rolls her eyes at her with a scoff. Because, really, how is she still out of the loop about this? Again, it’s true that they haven’t been flaunting it, but everyone else in her family knows at this point. Where has she been lately?

The answer is, of course, at Owen’s. What a surprise.

“Amelia, stop talking” Meredith berates her, hoping she will catch up on her own without her having to spell it out for her. _This is so stupid._

“Right, because people could hear” Amelia nods, conspiratorially. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret.”

“No, because I'm not harboring any _secret_ feelings.” She stresses the word _secret_ , stretching the vowels in a last ditch attempt to help Amelia understand before this gets too ridiculous even for their standards. “ _You_ may be harboring secret feelings for your ex, who you're playing house with, but I am not hiding anything.”

_You’re not hiding anything_ , she reminds herself, calming her own lingering fears. She needs to stop worrying about this, thinking she’s doing something she shouldn’t. She’s happy with Alex, and he’s happy with her, and they’re yet to find someone to object to the whole thing. No one actually cares.

*

As great a planner as April Kepner is, of course everything about this day starts, at some point, to go horribly wrong. They have to trache the wedding planner because of an allergic reaction, Deluca makes a drunken fool out of himself, Schmitt falls on the cake. And on top of all that most of the guests, including the officiant, still aren’t here.

Plus, the happy-couple-to-be is nowhere to be found.

“I think I might have something to do with this?” Arizona comes up behind them, whispering hurriedly. Alex, already on his second beer, laughs with more mirth that would probably be advised in this situation.

“Shut up” Meredith shushes him, narrowing her eyes at him, before turning to a very frantic Arizona. “I am sure it was _not_ something you said. She was fine when we left.”

“What did you say, exactly?” Alex asks, still smirking, and Meredith wants to stomp on his foot or something, to make him stop. She meets his eyes with an expression that she hopes will look like a warning, but she finds that he’s smiling at her brightly, and all the fight she has in her leaves her body, and she almost smiles back. _Damn it._

“I might, _might_ have implied it was crazy to get married without having had sex first.”

“I mean… you weren’t wrong” Alex shrugs, taking another swig of his beer. Meredith wants to kick him in the shins again.

“I’m sure it’s nothing” she says, trying to sound as sure as possible. “They’ll turn up any moment, and then we can jus-” The rest of her sentence gets knocked out of her by her son Bailey running straight into her legs, and she has to take a step back to keep her balance against the impact. She bends down to get face to face with the boy, and she can now see how worried he looks. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“Mommy, Sophia keeps saying April is missing! Is that true?”

Arizona whines pained, just as Alex audibly snorts again, and Meredith has to look up, shooting him a death glare. _I don’t think this is the right time, you idiot._

“It’s nothing, Bailey, I’m sure she’s fine” she repeats the same words she offered Arizona, and she hopes it’s enough to assuage her son’s worry. Of course, it isn’t.

“But mommy! What if something bad happened?” he cries out, tears starting to swell in his eyes. 

“Bailey, I really think she’s f-”

“Mommy, please!” He’s really close to crying now, quivering lip and all, and Meredith starting to panic a little, not really sure on how to diffuse the situation. Like divine intervention, she feels Alex crouching down next to her, taking the boy’s hands in his to grab his attention.

“Hey, Bailey- hey! Everything’s fine. You hear me?” Alex’s voice is firm and controlled, reassuring, and Bailey nods tentatively, but he’s still wide-eyed and pouting, not completely convinced. Alex studies the boy’s face for a moment longer, before speaking again. “Will it make you feel better if your mom and I go see if we can find her?” Bailey’s mood immediately changes at that, blinking the tears away and nodding more vigorously, even attempting a toothy smile.

Meredith is looking at Alex, endlessly impressed with how easy he always makes it look when he has to comfort children. It’s an acquired skill, sure, one he’s worked very hard to master, but for some reason Meredith thinks he’s always been able to do it, even when they were younger and you wouldn’t have bet a cent on him being an actually decent guy. He steals a questioning glance at her and she nods, acknowledging the new plan of action they’ve just silently made.

“Alright” she announces, straightening back up, wobbling a little on her heels as she goes, “Arizona, will you keep an eye on him? We’re going to, huh...” she looks between her son with his big, hopeful eyes, and Alex, who is just smirking again in that way that drives her mad. “...we’re going to see if we can find April and Matthew. We’ll be back in a minute.” Everything about this feels completely silly and unnecessary, and Meredith knows there’s traces of reluctance in her voice, but she just hopes Bailey won’t pick up on it. 

“Come on, let’s go” Alex stands back up too, and laces his fingers with hers as he starts walking before Meredith has the chance to change her mind, effectively dragging her along after him. She feels unbalanced on her high heels, and she has to wrap her other hand around his forearm to steady herself.

They make their way through the small crowd like this, hands clasped together, hips bumping against one another’s. Alex picks up the pace, chuckling quietly when she almost trips over her feet and she lets out a shrieking laugh, feeling everyone’s eyes on them. Meredith knows what this looks like, especially once they disappear down the secluded path off to the side of the clearing. She can hear murmuring, and that last, loud gasp is probably Amelia, finally connecting all the dots.

At least this took care of _that._

As soon as they turn the corner on the path, Alex slows down his pace, and Meredith can let go of his arm. She puts some distance between their bodies, thinking he’ll want some space now that he’s done with that little performance, but he keeps her hand tightly in his, and she shoots him a glance he ignores. He just squeezes her hand once, before readjusting them so that now their fingers are more casually interlocked, his thumb drawing lazy patterns on her knuckles. Warmth irradiates to her chest from the gesture, and she bows her head hoping her hair will hide the blush on her cheeks.

The path leads into a wide, wooden bridge, the trees clearing around it enough that small bushes of flowers have the space to grow at its sides. Meredith notices now for the first time that she can’t make out the noise from the reception anymore, and that there’s only one reason why they would be getting this far away from the wedding. She tugs at Alex’s hand to get his attention, and eyes him suspiciously. “Are we _really_ going to look for Kepner? I thought you were just calming him down!”

“Of course we are. Kids always know when you’re lying to them” he shrugs. “And if in the process I get to avoid having to listen to Hunt talk about his kid for another hour straight, well... that’s just a win-win situation.”

Meredith laughs, and doesn’t even notice Alex’s stopped walking until she gets whipped back by their still linked hands, and she stumbles rather ungracefully into his chest. Alex braces her fall, taking most of the impact. He’s looking at her through his lashes, and there’s none of the smugness and sarcasm from before, he just looks relaxed, content. Her heart skips a beat.

“Besides” he whispers, bumping his nose to hers, “I really think we needed to get away for a second.” He bends down, quickly pecks her on the lips before pulling away again. “Hi.”

“Hi” she whispers back, and it’s frankly ridiculous how something that was barely a kiss can take her breath away like that. She leans into him, arms going around his waist as she kisses him again, the quiet groan that escapes his lips feeling like a victory. It’s nice, taking the time to indulge in this kind of affection, and it’s not long before the passion in their kisses builds up enough that Meredith forgets what they were even doing here in the first place. Alex pulls her closer, his lips softly trailing a line down her jawline and then back up to her mouth, and his hands are traveling dangerously close to the small of her back, and below…

“Alex” she gasps against his mouth, and instead of pushing on he stops, chuckling.

“Sorry” he smiles apologetically, and then grows serious. She’d find it alarming, but he’s still holding onto her, his eyes still fixed into hers, and off all the things she’s still getting used to, the fact that he’s started being so open about his feelings is one of the things that still unsettles her the most, but in a good way. She’s constantly beaming with pride at how much he’s trying to make this work. 

“You know, now that we’re kind of on the subject…” Alex trails off, unsure, a hopeful glint in his eyes that makes her smile. “About the handholding, and that kiss on the cheek... before, when Amelia came to find you.”

“What about it?”

“Are we pda people now?” he asks, tone going from serious to amused in a second, an embarrassed smile breaking on his face. He realizes how stupid that sounded, and when Meredith bursts out laughing, he follows her good-naturedly. 

“No one is actually here, Alex.”

“I know, but regardless. You know, I thought we weren’t doing this, we weren’t… flaunting it.”

“You don’t want to?”

“I do, not that it’s anyone’s business.” He says it with conviction, arms holding tighter to her waist, and he sounds and looks so sure of himself Meredith lets go of the breath she didn’t even know she was holding in. She knows she’s been the one putting the brakes on this whole thing, and he’s been wonderfully patient about it, but sometimes she still wonders if, somehow, he was happier keeping the whole thing a secret too. She hadn’t realized she still needed the reassurance that he’s actually in this with her. For the millionth time, affection swells in her chest at his quiet, steadfast faith in them. “But honestly, if you’re not ready, or whatever, I don’t mind. Mer, you know that I-”

“Alex” she stops his ramblings, and she wants to kiss the confused expression off his face. She realizes that there’s nothing stopping her from doing it, so she does, smiling into his mouth.

It’s not as heated as before, but slower, softer. Alex threads his fingers in her hair, and she rests her palms on his chest. It’s the perfect kiss, passionate and indulging, making her feel safe and a little thrilled at the same time, and it’s crazy to her how she still isn’t tired of him. There’s everything in this kiss, all their history and everything they’ve said to each other (Meredith told him that she loved him one month into the relationship, and she still has dreams about the way Alex picked her up and threw her on the bed and _celebrated_ ). Kissing him, being with him, is simultaneously the most challenging and easiest thing she’s ever done in her life, and she’s still trying to find ways to make sure she never has to stop feeling like this.

The screams coming from the other side of the bridge feel like some sort of ironic punishment for taking this long to realize that.

*

They get Jackson ordained on the internet. The whole process takes maybe fifteen minutes, and it’s all they need for him to marry April and Matthew off on the ferry, on their way back to the city.

To anyone else, the choice would be… in poor taste, to say the least, but despite Matthew’s skeptical attitude April is beaming, and Jackson’s speech is beautiful, and at the end of the day this doesn’t even rank into the top three weirdest weddings Meredith attended for one of her coworkers, so who are they to judge. It’s sweet, even, in its own way. A little messed up, but perfect.

“Hey, there you are” Alex finds her at the back of the ferry, where she retreated to get away from the cheering crowd for a second. He snakes his arm around her waist, hand resting on her hip, and Meredith lets herself lean against his chest, suddenly realizing how exhausting the entire day has been. Alex catches her, tightening the grip on her waist and dropping a kiss to the crown of her head. The gesture is sweet and it makes her smile, burrowing deeper into him. “You okay?”

“I am, I’m just a little tired” she murmurs against his shoulder, allowing herself to close her eyes for a second. If she’s not careful, she’s going to fall asleep on her feet, in his arms. “Did you say goodbye to Arizona? You know she’s going straight to the airport when we get back.”

“Yeah, I did. I’m- I’m going to miss her” Alex says, quietly, and the only reason that she catches his words over the loud noise of the ferry and the roaring waves is because they’re so wrapped up in one another she can feel his chest vibrating under her ear. “I know it’s not like that, but some part of me is pissed at her that she’s leaving me behind.”

“Oh, Alex…”

“No, it’s fine” he tries, and Meredith has to detach herself from his chest, cocking one eyebrow at him until she makes him laugh. “I mean it, Mer, I’m going to be fine. It just sucks when people leave.” 

She knows. Her track record for being left behind is probably only matched by his. They used to joke about this all the time, when they were younger and stupid and thought they could defend themselves against hurt with sarcasm and indifference. They’ve done it well into their _respectable_ years too, keeping up the act, and Meredith liked that she had Alex on her side for it, the only one that seemed to truly get where her words would come from. Since they’ve gotten together, they’ve stopped doing it. She’s not sure why, but she thinks that it has something to do with the fact that when you finally have something that really, really makes you happy, it’s not that fun to imagine ever losing it.

“You know” she starts, her tone careful. She knows he’ll understand the meaning of what she wants to say, because he always does, but it still feels like some sort of big confession, bigger than telling him she had a crush on him, or saying _I love you_. They’ve already made each other all kinds of promises, but this is the first time she’s ever thought about the _forever_ part of it. Alex’s not looking at her but she can tell he’s listening. “Even if I ever have to leave… I’m never going to leave you.”

He looks down at her then, and smiles, and she knows they’re going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we’re done.
> 
> to be quite honest with you, I’ve had a bit of an emotional week at the idea of having to put the words ‘the end’ to this story. 
> 
> thank you thank you thank you if you stuck out with it to the end, I love each and every one of you.
> 
> I’d love it if you left a comment, or you can come find me on [tumblr](https://sentichefuoripiove.tumblr.com)! 
> 
> thanks for reading, see you on the other side xx
> 
> ALSO HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIVIA! i got you the epilogue of my fic as a gift asdfgghjk


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